NYT, others remember 'Collector of scoops'

`Nice headline - A" collector of scoops steps down -  on a New York Times article about Patrick McCarthy, who is leaving the Advance Publications umbrella.

McCarthy's leaving also prompted Aaron Gell to recall working for McCarthy on March 17. His  Snakes chase out St. Patrick (McCarthy) is worth your time. Says Gell:

"I spent four years as an editor at W, despite knowing next to nothing at all about fashion or society, and the biggest lesson I drew from working with Patrick—or tried to draw, anyway—was that great magazines exude swagger. They’re confident and sure-footed and they don’t look around for approval."

Gell recalls the one time that McCarthy prompted him to change plans for a magazine and reminds us of Charlie Rose quoting McCarthy as saying:

“The magazines have power, newspapers have power. It’s not individuals.”

People forget that when they get hung up on titles and positions. Or, let's be real, you don't even need the title or position. Many folks who once worked for news organizations find that people forget your name when the press boots you.

But back to the New York Times, where reporter Eric Wilson writes:

"As the editorial director of WWD, the (fashion) industry newspaper, and W, its glossy sister magazine for consumers, Mr. McCarthy always considered his publications to be the singular powerhouse for scoops, whether a designer was changing jobs or a retailer was headed for bankruptcy. In fact, his reign was so great that it was called “the McCarthy era” in a 1997 profile in New York magazine."

In 1997, he became chairman and editorial director of Fairchild Publications, now called the Fairchild Fashion Group and part of the Advance group. Last week, his departure was announced.

More from Wilson:

"Mr. McCarthy had risen through the ranks, from a reporter in the Washington bureau in the ’70s to London correspondent to Paris bureau chief to the helm of WWD in New York, where, in 1993 he remade W, which Mr. Fairchild had started as a society broadsheet in 1972, into the monthly glossy that it is today. (On Tuesday, Stefano Tonchi, the editor of T: The New York Times Style Magazine, was named the new editor of W, which will be split from Fairchild and folded into the glossy magazine portfolio of Condé Nast and Advance Publications, which acquired Fairchild in 1999.)"

 and there's this:

“It was all about the story,” Mr. McCarthy said on Wednesday. “Get the story. It doesn’t matter what it is: a fashion show, a party, a movie star or a celebrity. If you can get it first, it’s even better.”

McCarthy is staying until the end of the year, but doesn't say what's next.