The High Powered And Those Working For Vanity Fair Lose Views; Conde Nast Publications Stock Falls On Fears Of Potential James Wolcott Writer’s Block

Or, how a Times beat writer talks his way into the offices of the New Yorker. Don’t worry, the ulterior motives behind a sympathetic puff piece about how influential players at the New Yorker and Vanity Fair are losing their views of Bryant Park went completely unnoticed:

Day by dispiriting day, senior writers and editors at The New Yorker, Vanity Fair and other Condé Nast magazines and top lawyers at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom are watching one of the perks of their Manhattan careers getting slowly gobbled up — the view.

A 54-story tower for the Bank of America is rising floor by inexorable floor next to their daytime home — the 48-story Condé Nast Building, at 42nd Street and Broadway. Right now the bank structure is just a monkey-bars of steel beams,a half-dozen floors at best. But over the next year or two, employees on the eastern side of Condé Nast will find themselves staring right into the face of a glass and aluminum office building and its honeycomb of worker bees.

“I’m on the 21st floor, and I have a beautiful view of Bryant Park and the library and a little corner of the Chrysler Building and the Pan Am Building, now the MetLife, and I get tons of sun,” said Jeffrey Toobin, a staff writer for The New Yorker. “Soon it’s going to be a view of some law firm associate doing his work. My view will be entirely swallowed.”

Bruce Handy, a senior articles editor at Vanity Fair, who grew up among the sweeping vistas of California, had been delighted with the cinemascopic views out of his 22nd-floor office. “There’ll be a little less uplift for the soul,” he lamented.

. . .

That perspective was echoed by David Friend, the editor of creative development at Vanity Fair, whose office is on the 22nd floor. “We’re so busy that we take the view for granted sometimes, and it’s like the old Joni Mitchell song, ‘You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone,'” he said. [Emph. added to underscore what a whore writer Joseph Berger is being!]