The Talk of the Town

By James Kelly

For 35 years, William Shawn has presided over his domain like a benevolent father. A shy man of gentle reason, he created a familial haven for some of the country's best writers to do their finest work in. Harold Ross founded The New Yorker in 1925, but it was Mr. Shawn, as he is invariably called, who turned the magazine into a forum for serious reportage and polished fiction while retaining its breezy urbanity. Both magazine and man became institutions of sorts: The New Yorker as an elite but powerful voice in the worlds of literature and journalism, Shawn as the primary force behind its tone and style. His control over editorial matters was absolute; nothing ever happened at the magazine without his benign approval.

Something happened last week however. On Monday afternoon Samuel Newhouse, the head of a family-owned media empire that bought the magazine in 1985, visited Shawn in his sparely decorated office. Newhouse got right to the point: Robert Gottlieb, 55, president and editor in chief of the publishing house of Alfred Knopf, would succeed Shawn, 79, on March 1. Newhouse then handed Shawn a memo, dated the next day, that announced the editor's decision to retire. Shawn, taken aback, argued unsuccessfully that the next editor should come, as the magazine's staff had long expected, from within The New Yorker's ranks.

The word, which spread quickly through the magazine's offices on Manhattan's West 43rd Street, ignited a revolt among staffers that is likely to reverberate for months. Never mind that Gottlieb is considered a brilliant editor, held in high esteem by authors as disparate as Joseph Heller and Doris Lessing, as well as by a number of New Yorker writers who are published by Knopf. The shabby manner in which Shawn was treated and the fact that an outsider was chosen over his objection infuriated staffers. "There was an appearance of violence and crudity about what Newhouse did," complained a longtime New Yorker editor.

On Tuesday more than a hundred staff members gathered in a lobby of The New Yorker's offices to protest the move. After several splenetic speeches against Newhouse, they decided to draft a letter to Gottlieb asking him to step aside in favor of an in-house candidate. The three-paragraph message was signed by 154 people, including Roger Angell, Ann Beattie, Calvin Trillin and even the hermitic J.D. Salinger, who has not published a short story in The New Yorker since 1965. "It is our strange and powerfully held conviction," read the letter, "that only an editor who has been a long-standing member of the staff will have a reasonable chance of assuring our continuity, cohesion, and independence."

The argument did not sway Gottlieb, who lunched next day with Shawn at the Algonquin Hotel, the fabled watering hole of such bygone New Yorker wits as Robert Benchley and Dorothy Parker. The two men had never met. As they settled at Shawn's regular table, Gottlieb gave Shawn his reply to the petition, a three-sentence note that expressed sympathy but declared his intention "to take up this new job." As Gottlieb toyed with his omelet and Shawn ate an English muffin, the two decided that Gottlieb should take over in mid- February, after a week spent working with Shawn.

The staff member Shawn had picked to succeed him was Charles ("Chip") McGrath, 39, managing editor of fiction. According to New Yorker staffers, McGrath had planned to move into the office next to Shawn's this month, with the idea of taking over sometime during the summer. Shawn, say sources close to him, had informed Newhouse of his choice and, as far as Shawn understood it, secured his approval. According to Newhouse, Shawn "told me that he thought Chip was coming along very well, and I said I didn't see any reason why we should not go along with McGrath." But Newhouse insists, perhaps disingenuously, that he did not take Shawn's words as a recommendation to appoint McGrath. As for the timing of his own departure, Shawn acknowledges that in a talk with Newhouse he mentioned March 1, among other dates, but says he did not mean to suggest that he wished to leave then. "Mr. Newhouse seems to have misunderstood me," Shawn says.

Though Gottlieb's successor at Knopf, which is also owned by the Newhouse family, has not been announced, the job has been offered to Sonny Mehta, the editorial director of Pan Books, the British publisher. Newhouse may have felt that Gottlieb could bring an editorial zest to The New Yorker that might make it more appealing to advertisers and younger readers. After buying the magazine for $168 million, Newhouse installed an aggressive new publisher, Steven Florio, 37. Thanks partly to a TV ad campaign, the newly managed publication has increased its circulation from 480,000 to 575,000. But ad pages have dropped from 2,990 in 1985 to 2,644 last year, despite departures from custom, like foldout ads and the creation of special advertising sections.

Gottlieb says he is acutely aware of the magazine's traditions: "I accepted the position because The New Yorker is The New Yorker." If Gottlieb agrees with some critics who feel that the magazine has grown stolid, he does not say so. "The people at The New Yorker have worked for one man for 35 years, and suddenly there is a barbarian at the gates," he says. "But I am not a monster." For New Yorker staffers, the problem is that he is not another Shawn either. The sadness that filled the corridors on West 43rd Street last week would have been inevitable whenever Mr. Shawn left, no matter what the circumstances, but surely the rancor could have been avoided if he had been allowed to depart with greater dignity.

With reporting by Mary Cronin and David E. Thigpen/New York