Radhika Jones, author of Vanity Fair since 2017, said on Thursday that she will resign, a surprise decision that opens one of the most visible jobs in American journalism.
Mrs Jones, 52, told an email to Vanity Fair’s staff that she was gone to take on new challenges, adding that she did not want to experience the “horror to stay at the party”.
“I began to feel, more dynamically, to attract new goals in my life, around family and friends and writing and other ways to influence,” Ms Jones wrote.
She addressed Vanity Fair in a brief meeting at the offices of the magazine at One World Trade Center on Thursday, which was attended by Anna Wintour, the head of the magazine’s publisher, Condé Nast, who gave Mrs Jones emotional farewells, according to a copy.
Mrs Jones told e -mail that her last day would be in the spring. She did not comment on her future plans.
Ms Wintour told the meeting staff that Ms Jones would help the transition “as we begin the search for a new author”.
“We look forward to the exciting next chapter of Vanity Fair,” Ms Wintour said. He added: “Radhika, we are so grateful for your high journalism standards, your fearless and reinforcing leadership. David Remnick, the leading author of The New Yorker, another Condé Nast magazine, named Mrs Jones, editor of” Incredible Intelligence “.
“He brought enormous humanity to Vanity Fair and every meeting of Condé Nast’s editor,” Mr Remnick said. “I’ll lose her very much.”
Ms Jones leaves one of the top journalism jobs in a time of deep disorder in magazine business. Although many magazines have been closed or sold in recent decades, as advertising pages have shrunk, Vanity Fair has been kept as a key element of Condé Nast, which also publishes Vogue.
The magazine’s paid release is stable at about 1.2 million from 2017 to 2025, according to the controlled media alliance, with the development of digital subscriptions that offset the decline. Tissue circulation has been reduced by 39 % over the last four years, according to the Digital COMSCORE digital details.
Ms Jones started work in December 2017, succeeding Graydon Carter, who left that year after 25 years at the helm. A former director of the Book Department at The New York Times and a former top author of Time magazine was a surprise choice, which took many of Mr Carter’s leading lieutenants.
As soon as her term as an author began, Ms Jones had to compete with some of Vanity Fair’s best -known graduates. Mr Carter started the Air Mail, a digital weekly, after leaving, persuaded some of his former writers and publishers from Vanity Fair to accompany him. Jon Kelly, a former senior author of Vanity Fair, started Puck, a digital start that covers much of the same territory as the magazine.
Mrs Jones was the fifth editor of the modern incarnation of Vanity Fair, a Reel Age Jazz that Condé Nast began in 1983 and this became a definitive publication of American excessive, celebrities and materialism. Under the editorial Tina Brown and later Mr Carter, the magazine evolved into a global brand highlighted by the annual Oscar Party, where Moguls and Movie Stars mixed over the sofas and Michelin’s appearance.
Mr Carter, who left the magazine when he felt that the glory days of the industry were over, released a memoir last week recording his years of abundance at Vanity Fair. The stories of Concorde flights and unlimited expenditure accounts have only emphasized the reduced condition of the Condé at a time when social media and digital riders have exhausted the advertising base that has once suffered its printed glossy.
Ms Jones’ appointment also coincided with a cultural showdown at Condé Nast. She regretted that Vanity Fair, who had been able to legalize new stars for years, had overwhelmingly described the white actors in her covers and her debut was asked by Lena Waithe, the black actress and the screenwriter. Ms Jones was welcomed for her efforts to differentiate the stable writers and celebrities of the magazine, but also faced the impetus by some colleagues who believed that her editorial vision had no focus and panache.
The Oscar party’s appeal became unstable in Manhattan and the Hollywood press. “When invitations came out this year, one of my big customers asked me,” Is Vanity Fair yet a hot invitation? “That tells you everything you need to know,” a journalist said in 2019.
Mrs Jones threw a spoon (Beto O’Rourke’s 2019 presidential announcement) and commissioned a Amy Sherald painting by Breonna Taylor, a black woman killed by the Herpery Award in Kentucky, who made the waves when she appeared as a magazine’s cover in September 2020. Ms Jones was forced to fight with a shrinking budgets, redundancies and excited history issues that are no longer based on traditional magazines to reach the public.
