Daring (33 page)

Overnight, three posses of urban cowboys were headed for a showdown—the moneymen, the lawmen, and the pen men and women. The members of each posse rode into the showdown, saw into one another's minds, and were shocked at how different were their values, their conduct, and their codes.

Two of the magazine's top political writers, Richard Reeves and Ken Auletta, spent the siege week of January 1 getting in direct touch with key board members. The moneymen showered the writers with praise. “We're such fans!” They sounded positively starstruck.

“Fools, you're fools!” Byron Dobell told the writers each time they called in to report on conversations with moneymen who assured them the board would love to meet with the writers to resolve this thing. “You're talking to the enemy!” Byron shouted into the phone. He was histrionic, but he was right. “These people are in on it.”

Hard news first came in late Sunday, January 2. Even as board members were mollifying Auletta by phone, Rohatyn called to notify Clay that Patricof and those same board members had just sold. They were on their way to a gala signing party at Murdoch's Fifth Avenue apartment.

That weekend the moneymen learned how easy it is to play to the narcissism of “talent.” And the writers learned a phrase that helped us to understand the moneymen: “On Wall Street, loyalty is a quarter of a point.”

CLAY AND I WALKED INTO
the bite of winter's morning on that first Monday of January with a buoyancy that had something of our old frontier spirit in it. Clay was off to meet with the lawmen, I to meet with the journalists.

“Well, sweetheart,” he said at the corner, “we may have to start from scratch and put out a little country journal.”

“I'm with you,” I said.

A summit of the magazine family had been called for 8
A.M.
at
New York
's new offices on Second Avenue. One hundred twenty-five people filled the room, faces of underpaid staff regulars, secretaries, people who had medical bills, mortgages, and new babies to worry about. A great deal was made over the fact that no pressure would be put on anyone to quit. If and when the moment of truth came, it would be up to each person to make the best decision. All this did was insult people's loyalty. Mailroom people, clerical newcomers, switchboard operators, all wanted to be given the chance to act as few of us ever have the opportunity to do—on principle.

I read a statement from Clay: “Despite recent developments, I intend to fight and fight as hard as I can to keep what we have all built from being damaged. And I expect to win.” It cheered everyone. In the first half hour we arrived at a definition of ourselves. We were a “talent package.” We were not up for “barter.” And we meant to demand our right to “protect the company from deterioration.” Our support was behind the editorial leadership that had brought us all together.

Steve Brill, the lawyer-writer, was asked to work with me to draw up a statement for a press conference. From the moment we turned into activists we also grasped a reality that continually eluded our brethren. Phrases like “editorial integrity” and “creative community” stuck to the roof of the mouth with their piousness. What bound this family together was too emotional to be expressed. It was loyalty, self-respect, and, yes, love. By noon we had closed ranks around a clear consensus. It startled many of us to discover how intimately our sense of self-worth was tied to
New York, New West
, or the
Voice
. Our extended family was under siege.

When we met the press, it was not as pals, not even as colleagues. From that first news conference, the story was covered like the Super Bowl of publishing. A decisive board meeting was set for 7
P.M
. that evening. The writers were jumpy. What did we know about takeovers and the rights of employees? Martin Lipton, a wizard of tender-offer law, agreed to advise us gratis. The rumor reached us that a lynching party was waiting at the offices of Clay's company lawyer, Ted Kheel. The board of directors was set to meet there. Brill, Bernard, Auletta, and I rushed into the canyon of Park Avenue and began half running uptown. Dusk had swallowed the light. It was cold. I had forgotten my coat. Entering the reception area, it was impossible not to feel the suspense of walking into the OK Corral.

“Clay's in the back,” someone said.

The writers' delegation was escorted to a holding room. Kheel sent in a half gallon of Chivas Regal. We waited to see if the directors would hear us. Restlessness in the holding room bubbled up like gas in a shaken bottle. A runner from the boardroom gave us a blow by blow. “They” had thrown Kheel out as corporate counsel; two of Felker's directors had been kicked out; Rupert Murdoch and his banker took over those seats. Clay and Milton had just had their balls crushed. The raiders—by some arcane maneuver—had dissolved the board meeting altogether and were now holding a stockholders' meeting. Blood was running in the halls. Events were becoming deranged.

At 8:05
P.M
. Auletta picked up the phone. He dialed New York State's attorney general Louis Lefkowitz at home, hoping to initiate an investigation. Patricof walked by and darted in. “Ken, don't be upset. You have to understand.”

“Hello, Mr. Attorney General,” Auletta said into the phone.

A spasm shook Patricof. He walked away twitching like a marionette. Five minutes later he was back. “We'll take the writers now,” Patricof announced. “Do there have to be so many?”

Five people rose, including me. The body-heated boardroom temperature was in the mideighties by the time we were admitted. Everyone was in shirtsleeves. Another door opened. Murdoch. He stood with one hand in the pocket of his black suit, his voice utterly composed. Everyone began speaking heatedly. Except Rupert Murdoch. With the calm of the conquerer, he said, “I quite understand why there would be some nervousness on the part of the staff. It's natural to be concerned about their jobs with a new owner . . .”

“Patronizing,” I hissed under my breath.

“He can't conceive of people acting on principle,” Auletta fumed to Reeves.

Byron Dobell was the keynote speaker. “I don't know you people,” Dobell fervently addressed the antagonists, “and I don't want to know you. But I do know you people have been living off Clay Felker's genius for eight years. Going to your cocktail parties and pretending you had something to do with building this product. You don't have the right to sell people!”

The man was on fire. Murdoch's face registered no reaction.

“It's not even a question of genius,” Byron went on. “It's a question of skill. This man is a tremendously skillful person and he's put together the fragile structure of a magazine—the writers, editors, artists, photographers, everybody is in tune with one another. And you're going to smash that.”

When he sat down, not a person spoke. Auletta finally talked out the options. His speech built power as he came to the point about staff feelings. “You can't treat us like widgets, or pieces of meat.” Nervousness and sweating increased.

“Now wait a minute,” interrupted Robin Towbin, a prominent investment banker on the board. “I was trying to do the right thing. You know how hard Clay is to deal with. You know,” he addressed the writers with an injured tone, “it was me who tried to work this thing out . . .”

“You're a liar.” Clay glared at Towbin.

“I will ignore the attack.”

Auletta pushed the board member hard. “You told me Sunday you wanted to do business with the
Washington Post
. And you would delay any action until you had the session with the writers we kept talking about. Even as you were giving us that story, you were selling your stock.”

Towbin tried to wiggle out. “But events forced me—”

“You fucking liar!” Clay escalated. It was not the first time this manner of address was used, but this was the only time when the addressee confirmed its accuracy.

“Well, you're right . . .”

Stan Shuman, Murdoch's investment adviser, a sequoia of a man with an incongruously gentle voice, tried to tamp it all down by repeating the phrase he had used throughout: “Nothing has happened. Relax. This is just some paper changing hands.”

“What do you mean nothing has happened!” Clay shouted. “You've humiliated my board members. Two of the finest people I know.”

Patricof rose. “Whoa, whoa now, let's not go into that! Let's not go into that!”

“Shhhh! Shhhh!” Now Shuman came off his chair with his big arms fully extended, the lion tamer, calming the crowd. Dramatically, he announced, “Rupert wants to speak.”

Murdoch injected a sedative tone of voice. “This is very unfortunate,” he said. “Can't we get together, Clay?”

Clay was sitting right beside him. “Rupert,” he said quietly, “you and I once talked about this and agreed we could never work together, right?”

“Yes, but I meant we could never work together as publishers,” Murdoch replied. “We could work together if I were publisher and you were editor.”

This civilized intermission was brief. Burden cut through the cordiality between Murdoch and Clay with the accusation, “Clay, you went behind my back and tried to sell the company to Murdoch yourself.”

“Carter, you're a goddamned liar,” Clay replied.

I was shaking with rage, but I had never heard Clay talk this way. Murdoch affirmed that Clay was correct.

“He knows what you are,” Clay said matter-of-factly to Carter. “An incompetent dilettante. No one is going to give you what you want, a tin star marked ‘publisher.'”

Murdoch went back to wooing Clay. He needed Carter on Saturday, the other players on Sunday, but this was Monday and now he needed an editor. “Clay, I think you're an editorial genius. I want you to stay and run the magazine.”

The men he had already bought picked up the cue. Board member Bob Towbin said he thought Clay was an editorial genius. Another board member, Tom Kempner, said he thought Clay was an editorial genius. Patricof added, “We all know Clay's the best editor in the world.” Murdoch said, “I agree,” but cut back slightly lest this gush of hot air could get expensive, “Clay Felker is the best editor in America.”

Clay looked at Murdoch as he said evenly, “I, like you, am a publisher.”

Kempner said coolly, “I think maybe we've had enough of the writers. They shouldn't witness this behavior.”

Stan Shuman, speaking for Murdoch, repeated the preposterous fiction, “Nothing has changed.” Kempner looked at our writers' group as if at an eighth-grade civics class. “You people don't understand,” he said. “In America, anyone can sell anything he wants at any time. You're going to have to get that straight. That is just American capitalism.”

As Clay and I left for our apartment along with Milton, Patricof came running behind us. “Milton,” he called. “I'm counting on you, Milton, to protect the corporate asset.”

“There is no corporate asset, Alan,” Milton said, with factual indifference. “That's the point. People—that's all there ever was.”

WELL AFTER MIDNIGHT,
Bob Pirie arrived at our digs with his full team of Skadden, Arps crisis troops. Looking as angelic as Casper the Ghost, the white-haired attorney came into the kitchen and kissed my cheek and whispered, “I've got a splendid settlement. You're really going to like this settlement.”

I pulled back. “Who the hell asked for a settlement?” We were all ready to go to court the next day to hear the judge decide on Clay's temporary restraining order. Pirie soothed us with sweet talk and called us to sit down together in the living room while he laid out the terms. When he was finished, I demanded, “But if we're right, why are we giving up?”

Pirie was nonplussed. He explained what is rudimentary thinking in the law: one should try to cut a deal between this moment and court because that is the only time one has a negotiating position. Pirie suggested that Clay and Milton and I go off and talk it over in private.

“It's unfair for anyone else to make a judgment on what Clay should do,” Milton chided me in the study. “No one else has the same to lose. Clay is the only one who can be castrated by Murdoch, financially ruined and left out in the cold with a noncompete clause for three years.” Milton had hit the central nerve. If Murdoch enforced the noncompete clause, in the publishing world, Clay would be a vegetable.

Pirie broke in on our private meeting. He concentrated his full powers of persuasion on convincing Clay that settlement was the only rational course. If Pirie lost a motion on the preliminary injunction, he said, the judge would form an opinion on the case, Murdoch could go ahead and buy the stock, and Clay would be left out on a limb fighting for months with his own funds. “If we have full-blown litigation here, it could cost Clay a half-million dollars.”

At 4
A.M
. Bob Pirie left with the nod he wanted. Clay turned mournfully to his closest friend and partner, Milton. “They've stolen everything we've created. We have nothing left.”

“We have our talent left,” Milton said. “And our integrity.”

FRIDAY, JANUARY
7, 1977, was a long, dull ache of a day. A delegation of editors and writers met with Clay and Milton to save the senior members of the family. Ten people were given the protection of two-year contracts. As the joyless day deepened into evening, forty members of the magazine's talent package walked out, quitting in support of Clay and rejection of Murdoch. They gathered at a restaurant ironically called Chicago, across from the magazine's home on Second Avenue. There they waited for Clay and Milton to arrive and give direction.

I sat with the two men in Bob Pirie's office above P. J. Clarke's and watched as the last breaths of their offspring were stilled by a signature. Clay's broad shoulders drooped. I had never before seen him give up.