Brill's Content: Letter from the Editor

As I write this, President Clinton is about to visit Russia for the first time since the election of its new president (and former KGB officer), Vladimir Putin. Clinton and his delegation will undoubtedly have much praise for the liberal economic policies and pro-market reforms of Putin and his inner circle. What will likely not be discussed, however, is the fact that although the country moves closer and closer toward a democracy that we can recognize and support, suppression of the media has become more severe than it has been in years -- in some instances recalling the worst of the Soviet era. Our two-part report on Russia and the media documents, in often shocking detail, how government officials muzzle and harass journalists -- and how, in the process, the newly rich media moguls are co-opted and corrupted. A few of these men are both press czars (owning television stations, printing presses, newspapers, and magazines) and politicians -- mayors, governors, members of Parliament.

This issue also offers a kaleidoscopic look at American media-moguldom. Richard Schickel's revisionist take on William Randolph Hearst reintroduces us to the first truly modern media baron, who knew the value of creating content and controlling its distribution. The only-in-America Hearst owned, edited, and distributed the news (and produced movies) -- all while serving in Congress and running for mayor of New York City and president of the United States. Hearst used his publications as a platform for his often surprising political views but never let that get in the way of his bottom line.

Martin Peretz, the owner and editor in chief of The New Republic -- the 85-year-old left-leaning journal of political and cultural commentary -- has long used his magazine as a vehicle for expressing his political passions and influencing policy (though unlike Hearst he doesn't seem to need his magazine to make money). The 60-year-old Washington insider has spent more than 25 years at the rudder of one of the country's most august magazines, but he has focused perhaps even more intently on the ambitions of his close friend and former Harvard student Al Gore. Robert Schmidt explains that because of the men's three-decade-long friendship, Peretz has had to walk a very fine line, supporting Gore personally while trying to keep his magazine neutral. Equally influential during her long career but in a very different sphere is Grace Mirabella, who edited Vogue for 18 years and went on, after she was fired, to take Rupert Murdoch up on his lunchtime suggestion that they start a magazine bearing her name. It folded in April after ten years, four of them under Mirabella's leadership. Her memoir tells the story of a publishing insider trying to redefine the rules of the women's-magazine game but being unable, ultimately, to surmount the business forces that were beyond her control.

And, meet the new generation of mini-moguls, who could redefine today's media culture as dramatically as Hearst did in his time. (Did you know that the founder of Napster, the Internet venture shaking up the music industry, is a 19-year-old college dropout?) Austin Bunn's group portrait of the teenage Internet vanguard charts their reinvention of not only modern media but the very structure of the American family. The ÒTeen GuruÓ phenomenon represents a seismic shift in the culture that has only begun to register. These are the true children of Hearst, some of whom will be able to afford to build circles around San Simeon -- once they are old enough to drive.