>>Erik: What role did New York Magazine founder Clay Felker play in your development?
>>Rachel: There is a very specific reason I went to UC Berkeley to get a journalism
degree.
>>Erik: What was that?
>>Rachel: Clay Felker, who is the father of new journalism, started this program at UC
Berkeley called the Felker Magazine Center. He basically [pause} Felker discovered Tom
Wolfe, discovered Gail Shaheen, discovered Gay Talese, started New York Magazine.
>>Erik: Started New York magazine.
>>Rachel: His whole philosophy was New Journalism, which is a famous essay written by Tom Wolfe,
which is the idea you take the elements of fiction and apply them to non fiction instead
of the traditional reporting triangle where you start with the facts. Instead, you start
with telling a story. The reason new journalism developed was because TV started overcoming
traditional print writing and there needed to be a way to compete with TV. So magazines
essentially developed A because the leisure class and there became segmented markets to
write about, but also there needed to be a way to compete with this visual culture. So
what is new journalism? It is taking essential elements and writing, essentially, a movie
on the page. He died in early July 2008. His funeral, his memorial service, which was at
Tom Wolfe`s place out in Southampton, was really fun. They were drinking champagne.
That was how he was. He really was a force. He had an amazing ability to listen. He really
listened. He went out every night. He was constantly sucking in experience. I think
that makes a really good editor. He had the ability to recognize what a writer`s passion
and to be able to say ``I think you should do a story on that.`` At Esquire, I`m not
sure about the facts about this, it was he who told Gloria Steinem to dress up as a Playboy
bunny and write the famous piece. It was funny, at his memorial service, Gloria Steinem, who
I just met for the first time a couple weeks ago. I was so impressed by meeting her. One
of the first things I said to her was how I was so impressed with her speech at Clay`s
funeral because what she said was ``Clay gave me the confidence that it was OK to get angry.``
So, which I thought this was really interesting. She said we would get into fights, we would
scream at each other and then I would walk away. I would think ``Oh my God. I will never
have another job again. He is going to fire me.`` Then I would hear him on the phone saying,
``You know, Gloria Steinem was saying this.Ó It would pass and what it was was that sometimes
passion is anger. It passes through and doesn`t mean the relationship is over or that you
are a bad person. I thought that was really influential.
Rachel: This one time I was editor of a magazine at Berkeley working with him. The magazine
came back from the printer and it was absolutely riddled with errors. We realized we needed
to get it copy edited in a much better way and go back and reprint it. He got so angry
at me. He started pounding his fist on the desk and said ÒThe worst thing about being
a teacher is that you cannot fire your students.Ó