Last Thursday night at the Four Seasons restaurant from 6:30 to 9:30, the New York Observer’s proprietor Jared Kushner hosted a 25th anniversary celebration of the weekly Manhattan newspaper.
As Liz Smith will tell you in her column, the place was bumper-to-bumper New York “names,” including the Mayor.
New Yorkers love these parties because it’s wall-to-wall celebrities, or boldfacers, or VIPs, or all together, and when you’re there you can feel you’re in the thick of it. If the invitation says it’s going to be at the Four Seasons, even better: you know the host is making a statement. Period.
Mr. Kushner acquired the paper in 2006 from its owner/publisher/ founder Arthur Carter, who started it in 1987. The former publisher, Mr. Carter is a jack-of-all-talents – and I say that most seriously, but more about him in a minute.
![]() | ![]() | | Arthur and Linda Carter. | ![]() | | Mr. and Mrs. Jared Kushner. | ![]() |
Mr. Kushner is the quintessential Apprentice, so to speak. He even married the Boss’ (The Donald) daughter. When he first came on the scene, a young man in his mid-20s, the son of a very rich real estate investor from New Jersey, he (or his father) had just purchased 666 Fifth Avenue, the landmark office building. There was a lot of publicity: Kid buys skyscraper; that sort of thing.
Then he bought the Observer for a few million, and many thought this was the end of the Observer. It was the end of the paper, editorially, as the early readers had known it. Although that was then and this is now.
Arthur Carter, the paper’s founder -- who probably was never as well known on the celebrity circuit as is successor Mr. Kushner -- is what used to be referred to as a Renaissance man, Manhattan style of course. He was also very well known in the business as well as the publishing community. He had already made his fortune.
He grew up in Woodmere, Long Island -- Five Towns. He came to the Big Town via Brown University (’53) -- where he majored in French literature -- and Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. He went to work on Wall Street for Lehman Brothers. In 1960 he and some partners started their own brokerage firm, Carter, Berlind, Weill, with Roger Berlind and Sanford (Sandy) Weill. Carter Berlind, as it was referred to in the trade, was a hotshot firm in the Go-Go years of the 1960s on Wall Street.
These were the Young Turks, the generation before the Masters of the Universe. There were several very dynamic small(ish) groups of young Wall Streeters who were the pacestters. This was also the age of the LBO and the conglamateurs. Before it was over, they merged and acquired a lot of Wall Street. Carter Berlind merged into several firms including Shearson Hammill and even Lehman Brothers, not to mention American Express, Kuhn Loeb, etc.
After ten years at it, the partners Carter and Berlind left the business, both very rich. Sandy Weill stayed, and you know that story.
![]() | ![]() | | A sculpture from Arthur Carter: Orthogonals. | ![]() |
Arthur Carter had an artistic side to cultivate. Today he is a very accomplished painter and sculptor. This is not a hobby or an avocation. This the artist at work. Another facet of the man’s personality was the interest in newspaper publishing. He first acquired The Nation (which he later sold). He started a weekly called The Litchfield County Times in Connecticut, and then the Observer.
There was competition for his kind of weekly although he let it be known on launching that the editorial would have a strong viewpoint and be concerned with such subjects as political corruption, business, the environment, the homeless and the great disparity of wealth (and poverty) among New Yorkers. Furthermore it would be printed on peach-colored newsprint and cost 50 cents on the newsstand, so everyone could see it.
In the first issue the paper went after real estate developer Mortimer B. Zuckerman's proposed business tower at Columbus Circle. The Observer editorial on city planning declared that New York ''does not belong only to the developers.'' Imagine.
''I don't have any off-hand solutions to the city's problems,'' Mr. Carter said. ''I'd like to see a less corrupt city. I'd like to see a cleaner city. So would everybody.''
In 2008, NYU where Mr. Carter had previously taught as an adjunct professor of philosophy and journalism, they named the journalism department after him: the Arthur Carter School of Journalism.
The Observer, under its founder’s aegis made a big impression on the city fathers because Arthur Carter kowtowed to no one and was a man with not only his own ideas but a great deal of personal experience to enhance them. The editorial staff was sharp and hungry (they were not overpaid). The paper’s first editor John Sicher (who was Carter’s lawyer) was succeeded a few years later by Graydon Carter. Carter refocused the editorial more toward media and celebrity.
One of the paper’s most popular columnists was the oft-outspoken commentator, Michael Thomas, who wrote “The Midas Watch,” The frequently controversial column covered finance, politics and culture. Thomas, like his publisher, pulled no punches. I asked him yesterday about the early days there.
“The paper was initially serious and reformist (Arthur had been publisher of The Nation),” he wrote to me yesterday. “I had been on Wall Street (partner of Lehman Brothers), and been in so-called Manhattan and Hamptons society, grew up privileged, didn't think much of what I saw (think even less today), and I followed the style of the great baseball umpire Bill Klem, who declared at the end of his career, ‘I called 'em as I seen 'em.’
“I went after what I construed as the vulgarity, exhibitionism and general jerkiness that I thought were giving wealth, given what I knew about how money is made in this country, a bad name. I identified my principal varlets and varletesses by name. It was said that I kept the paper going -- people curious about ‘what outrageous thing about whom is he going to write next!’”
(I know I read it to see what Michael Thomas was going to say and about whom he was going to say it.)
“Graydon Carter left to go over to Vanity Fair, Thomas recalled, “building it into the hugely successful magazine it is, and Peter Kaplan took over. NYO became celebrated as ‘a writer’s paper.’ All over the world of big media today you see bylines of writers who whetted their skills at NYO.”
Arthur Carter eventually tired of the process of supporting the paper in the changing times. Word was he could afford to spend the millions annual to keep it afloat. It was on the market (at least quietly) for quite some time before Jared Kushner turned into White Knight.
In the years since it was acquired by Mr. Kushner, the editorial has wandered far from its founder’s first charter. It is very popular among young professional New Yorkers. When he bought the paper seven years ago this year, there was much speculation about its future and its ability to keep publishing.
However, for a wealthy businessman who is active in the community, there are great advantages in having “a voice.” The New York Observer has provided Jared Kushner with that voice overnight – and now it’s his voice. The message was in the party on Thursday night at the Four Seasons. |
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