By Emily GlazerThe Daily Northwestern
After spending years working on tight deadlines, Victor Navasky never anticipated taking 30 years to complete his memoir.
The book, “A Matter of Opinion,” details his struggles and successes in a journalism career that has spanned more than three decades. It focuses on the three periodicals where Navasky spent most of his career: Monocle, an opinion magazine he began while at Yale Law School; The New York Times Magazine, where he was an editor; and The Nation, where he is publisher emeritus.
After writing books on politics, Navasky said in the first talk of the 2006-07 Crain Lecture Series that he thought it would be easier to write on his own life.
Instead of researching at a library and interviewing people, “this was a book I could write because every day I would be doing research while sitting at my desk,” he said.
After years of on-and-off work, he said he realized that was not the case.
“Book writing is slow journalism,” he said.
But before writing books, Navasky spent years working on newspapers, beginning with “Monocle,” which was founded in the mid-1950s during the McCarthy era. This was a time, Navasky said, when satire was a prominent strategy for social criticism.
It was a great magazine, he said, but “like the United Nations Police Force, it should only come out when necessary.”
Through his experience at the various publications, Navasky said he learned about the transaction between the writer and the reader, how to successfully raise money and lots of bureaucratic strategy.
“It was beneficial because it showed me what not to do,” he said.
After some freelance work, Navasky began working for The New York Times Magazine, where he said he learned about the mainstream media and its notion of objectivity.
Entering that job, he thought his role would be to identify new writers and ideas, Navasky said.
He was wrong. He would have to play office politics to get his story ideas accepted. He was forced to find newspaper clippings in The New York Times to back up his story pitches to the magazine. He enjoyed his career, but he was frustrated by the publication’s structure.
After his tenure at the magazine, which ended in 1978, Navasky became the editor of left-wing opinion journal The Nation, where he served as editor until 1995.
The Nation, Navasky noted, is the country’s oldest weekly magazine, with more than 140 years to its credit.
“In the magazine business, survival is the ultimate test of success,” Navasky said.
The function of many of these smaller, independent publications is not to make money, but for those involved to be discovered, he said.
Those “discovered” through The Nation include Ralph Nader, Martin Luther King Jr. and Albert Einstein.
As an independent leftist publication, the magazine, often is cited by critics as preaching to the choir, he said.
“But anyone who reads our editorial pages will know it is the least harmonious choir,” Navasky said.
Navasky also applied his experience in the field to address the future of journalism. During a question and answer session after his lecture, he said the blogosphere won’t replace print, just as paperbacks won’t replace hardcover books.
He did add a caveat, though.
“You’re talking to a man who predicted Adlai Stevenson would be elected – twice,” he said. “I’m not one to talk about the future.”
Reach Emily Glazer at [email protected].
