HIGH ANXIETY

Letters

News Reel

"Read all about it" may apply to New York tabloids, but unfortunately not to your article on New York tabloids ["Paper Lions," by Edward Klein, October].

You fail to mention the $ 150-millionplus New York Newsday has spent to start up the paper and build its circulation—it was recently announced that the paper is losing $14 million a year—and you dismiss my analysis of its problems with a screed from its publisher. As for the allegations by the editor of New York Newsday, Don Forst, that I offered him the job of editor of the Daily News, I would point out that Mr. Forst later acknowledged to me that I had not offered him the job. More recently he said I offered him the job before I'd even met with him. Sure.

As for the many anecdotes and "facts" quoted in your story, it sure would have helped if they had been verified by me. Take the suggestion that I went up to the "crime-infested South Bronx" with my chauffeur, who allegedly "packed a gun," to inspect potential sites for a new printing plant. The story says, " 'Mort got out of the car. . . walked half a block, then scurried back to his car in terror of all those Daily News readers up there.' " Here is the true story: I visited the South Bronx site with the Bronx borough president and the Bronx police chief. I told them that, despite their advice, I wanted to walk the seven blocks to the nearest subway stop, which would be used by our employees. I did so and observed many policemen about, so I asked them why they were there. One of them said, "To make sure there was no trouble." Realizing that this would not be the best time to test the safety of the seven-block walk for the Daily News employees, I told the various officials that I would return on my own late at night, which I did in the next week at 11:30 P.M. I walked the seven blocks a second time. My driver does not pack a gun, but maybe he needs one to shoot down false and pernicious rumors printed as facts and judgments in your article.

Your discussion of Pete Hamill, an old friend whom I greatly admire and respect, is another illustration of misreporting. He was not disqualified because I feared the strength of his character, intellect, and persona. Quite the opposite. These were the very reasons I considered him as editor. However, I was unwilling to risk hiring someone who had never before been an editor of a tabloid which needed as much work as the Daily News did. Interestingly, all the writers I knew recommended Pete, and none of the editors I knew did. Or take Andrew Neil of The Sunday Times of London, a brilliant editor, but one whose interest in the Daily News primarily as an opportunity to make a potful of money rendered him completely inappropriate by my standards. Regarding those editors who came over to the News from the Post, your writer's derogatory comments were false, outrageous, and irresponsible. They are men of character and decency whom I admire and like.

Finally, let me comment on the most important job of a publisher. It is to select the right editor for the paper. This is not easy when, as in my case, you are forced to hire someone you have never worked with. But I stand by my record of hiring successful editors at both The Atlantic Monthly and U.S. News & World Report. As for the Daily News, my selection of Martin Dunn as editor in chief came only after his publication was named "Newspaper of the Year'' last year in Britain and after his energetic and talented stewardship of the Boston Herald proved that a Brit could make the transatlantic hop and edit an American paper. Why were these central facts left out?

The success of the Daily News and the other New York tabloids will come from a commitment to what goes on their pages. Your article contained virtually nothing of the editorial focus of our efforts. It certainly should have contained, in the interest of full disclosure, the fact that your writer, Mr. Klein, unsuccessfully sought a job on the editorial staff of U.S. News, which turned out to be an editorial success without him, no doubt to his amazement.

MORTIMER B. ZUCKERMAN Chairman and co-publisher, the Daily News New York, New York

Men of Letters

To assign Michael Shnayerson to write a piece, any piece, touching on the recent history of Harper's Magazine is tantamount to sending out for so many column inches of spite ["He'll Always Have Elaine's," October]. His grievance dates to the winter of 1975, when I succeeded his father, Robert Shnayerson, as the magazine's editor. He thinks that I somehow usurped his father's rightful place, and the suspicion gives melodramatic form to his article about the rise and fall of Willie Morris as a literary celebrity in New York in the late 1960s.

Prior to writing the article, Shnayerson questioned me at length about Morris's last days as editor of Harper's Magazine, in the winter of 1971, and during the course of the interview, abruptly and apropos of nothing in particular, he charged me with having deceived his father. "How can I believe you," he said, "when you betrayed my father?" Although the question cast something of a pall on the conversation, I told him frankly that I couldn't have betrayed his father, because I had never pledged allegiance to his father—that I had tried to dissuade the magazine's owner, John Cowles, from hiring his father, and that I had never concealed my opinion of his father's abilities. Not even a fragment of the answer appears in Shnayerson's text. He offers only his own, preferred version of the truth, late in his narrative and without contradiction— "My father felt strongly that Lapham had betrayed him." The word "betrayal" implies deception, but Shnayerson uses it as a synonym for disagreement.

The same modus operandi—declared bias supported by sophism—informs Shnayerson's account of Willie Morris's sudden exit from the New York literary stage. Shnayerson doesn't know how or why Morris destroyed his career or defeated his own best hopes, and so he elects me to the office of villain, filling up almost a third of his article with an overwrought account of a meeting at the St. Regis hotel in which I supposedly "betrayed" Morris and, as with Shnayerson the elder, usurped his rightful place as the editor of Harper's Magazine. Never mind that the meeting took place six days after Morris had resigned, by which time any betrayal (real or imagined) would have lost both an occasion and a motive. The plot device serves Shnayerson's narrative purpose, and he raises the specter of conspiracy despite the fact that he knows full well that the simple chronology of events reduces the suggestion to absurdity.

When Morris resigned as the magazine's editor in March 1971, I had been a contributing writer for no more than a few months. I barely knew Morris, and I first learned of his resignation when I read his farewell statement in The New York Times. The newspaper story appeared on a Friday, and over the following weekend an ad hoc committee of the friends of Willie Morris (roughly 100 New York writers of various talents and declensions) sent a petition to John Cowles in Minneapolis, demanding that Morris be restored to the editor's chair. I was so distant from the circle of Morris's admirers that I was not asked to sign the petition.

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Cowles answered the petition on the subsequent Tuesday, traveling from Minneapolis to New York to meet with the magazine's remaining writers and editors at the St. Regis hotel. He began by saying that he would not re-engage Morris. Nobody present raised any objection. Instead of insisting on Morris's prompt return, two of the magazine's writers (David Halberstam and Larry L. King) demanded the immediate promotion of Robert Kotlowitz, the magazine's managing editor, to the rank of editor in chief. When Cowles declined to act within the hour, they walked out of the meeting, threatening to do as much harm as possible to the reputation of Harper's Magazine.

Because I didn't also resign as a show of loyalty to Kotlowitz, Shnayerson finds me guilty of betraying Morris. The syllogism makes no sense, and Shnayerson, knowing that it makes no sense, relies on hearsay and innuendo, quoting King and Halberstam to the effect that my memory of the conversation at the St. Regis hotel doesn't correspond to their own. Once again, the word "betrayal" serves as a synonym for disagreement.

Another writer may one day make of Willie Morris's passage through New York in the years of 1967-71 a genuinely dramatic and affecting story, but in the hands of Shnayerson the younger what could have been a portrait of a man becomes instead a propaganda poster.

LEWIS H. LAPHAM Editor, Harper's Magazine New York, New York

To carry off a hagiography of Willie Morris, and to carry on his own grudge against Lewis Lapham, Michael Shnayerson required a narrative that would sadly tail off when the story arrived at the Harper's Magazine of the past 10 years. And so we learn that Harper's is today "coolly austere" and "reduced in scale."

Now, the careful reader will no doubt sense the careful vagueness of these phrasings, and conclude that the storyteller is one not quite ready to argue his argument too much. I could mention that Shnayerson has on more than one occasion expressed his admiration for Harper's—see, I just did—or that he is a subscriber in good standing, But let me point instead, briefly, to the magazine itself, where I spent 9.75 satisfying years, the last few as deputy editor. The "Harper's Index," "Readings," the "Annotation"—all imitated throughout the magazine industry, all a hit with Harper's 175,000 subscribers, all Lapham's doing.

GERALD MARZORATI "The Talk of the Town" editor. The New Yorker New York, New York

MICHAEL SHNAYERSON REPLIES: Lewis Lapham and Gerald Marzorati have confused the messenger with the message. The piece contains not one word of criticism or spite from me about Lapham; that, along with the conviction that Lapham's actions at the St. Regis meeting constituted a betrayal of Morris, comes entirely from Lapham's former colleagues. In fact, I rather respected Lapham's pugnacity, and took care to quote him at length (greater length than I did his detractors). Neither in person nor in the piece did I say Lapham had betrayed my father; I reported that my father felt he had. It's not for me to judge, and I don't. I do enjoy the magazine, but my piece was about Morris's tenure, not Lapham's.

Princess Bride

I am writing on behalf of Mr. Isamu Kamata concerning Edward Klein's article "Masako's Sacrifice" [June]. There are manifest false descriptions in the article as far as Mr. Kamata is concerned. It is untrue that Masako Owada visited Mr. Kamata's residence to meet with Empress Michiko to discuss the marriage of Crown Prince Naruhito. Mr. Kamata has never met Masako Owada personally, and published his own account of the prince's views on the marriage in the Japanese monthly Bungei Shunjuu in March.

HIROSHI HATAGUCHI Hataguchi & Partners Tokyo,Japan

EDITOR'S NOTE: In "The White House Beast, " by Jacob Weisberg (September), George Stephanopoulos was incorrectly credited with disclosing to reporters that in May the F.B.I. was investigating the White House travel office. It was in fact Dee Dee Myers who first disclosed that fact publicly.

Letters to the editor should be sent with the writer's name, address, and daytime phone number to: The Editor, Vanity Fair, 3.50 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10017. The letters chosen for publication may be edited for length and clarity.