• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, July 22, 2008

I'd like to dedicate this issue of Media to Clay Felker, the legendary magazine editor who died last month at the age of 82. Without Clay Felker, there might not be a Media magazine. Without Clay Felker, I can tell you, you most likely wouldn't be reading a column written by Joe Mandese.

Clay will probably be remembered best as the person who conceived New York magazine, and in the process, defined a new age in urban journalism. He also was the muse, if not the father, of the so-called "new journalism" movement that spawned a generation of some of the best writers our nation has ever seen - people such as Tom Wolfe, Jimmy Breslin, Pete Hamill and Gail Sheehy, who is also his widow. But Clay's influence extended well beyond superstar journalists. It even touched trade "hacks" like me.

His influence began long before I actually knew him, or even knew of him. Growing up in New York City during the 1970s, I was vaguely aware that I wanted to be some kind of writer, but it wasn't until I started reading New York and its sister weekly newspaper, The Village Voice, that I even considered doing something like that for a living. And it wasn't until I listened to an account of the 1977 takeover of New York Magazine Corporation on listener-supported radio station WBAI that I really began to think about the process of journalism and the people behind it.

The New York publishing company had just been acquired by an expansion-minded Australian media businessman who, according to the WBAI broadcaster, then ousted the team behind New York in a move that marked the end of an era in New York City journalism. I had never heard the names Clay Felker or Rupert Murdoch before, but both would ultimately figure prominently in my career. In retrospect, it all seems fairly coincidental.

A few years later I applied for a summer internship at a New York-based magazine called ANNY, which had just been acquired by some of the former New York Magazine Corp. execs ousted by Murdoch. In fact, one of them, Ken Fadner, is still my boss (he is the founder and publisher of MediaPost, which publishes this magazine). Over the next year, Ken and his partners, Jack Thomas and Penn Tudor, recruited some of the best journalists in the business to help create what would eventually be known as Adweek. I was fortunate enough to spend the first eight years of my career working for them and, for much of that time, working for Clay Felker, who did for Madison Avenue what he had done for the city of New York: He focused on the reason it was so important to the rest of the world. And he focused on how the rest of the world influenced the business of advertising. And of course, he got us to focus on the great narratives and indelible characters that make the ad business unlike any other.

The secret behind Clay's ability to produce great journalism was actually pretty simple: He was skilled at attracting the best people. And he was even better at inspiring good people to get the best out of themselves.

The last time I saw Clay was at a 2004 symposium organized as a tribute to him. The main panel featured many of the top magazine editors in the business, including Wired and Federated Media founder John Battelle, current New York magazine editor Adam Moss, as well as the next generation of quasi-journalists, including then-Wonkette blogger Ana Marie Cox.

During the tribute Moss acknowledged, "Every day I do this, I think, 'Well, what would Clay do with this?'" Hardly a day goes by that I don't think the same thing. When I saw Clay at the reception following the symposium, I was heartened to see that the trademark twinkle in his eye was as infectious as ever. And it inspired me as it always had. It also reminded me of my favorite Felker-ism - one he would use to inspire young journalists to get the most out of what they were doing.

"A story," he would say, "should jump off the page and into the reader's mind." The story of Clay Felker is, and will forever be, in mine. Thanks, Clay.