About George

George

George was a monthly American magazine of politics as lifestyle, published in New York City by Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S. from September 1995 until January 2001. It was founded by John F. Kennedy Jr. and Michael J. Berman, and its premise, stated in its tagline "not just politics as usual," was to marry celebrity and media treatment to political subjects so that readers who ignored conventional political journalism might read about politics. For a brief period it had the largest circulation of any political magazine in the United States, helped by its founder's fame; it died less than two years after his death in a plane crash in July 1999.

Named for George Washington, the first president — and, inevitably, for the founder's father, President John F. Kennedy — George tried to build a general-interest glossy on the model of Rolling Stone, Esquire or Vanity Fair, with politicians cast as cover personalities. The experiment attracted enormous attention, persistent criticism and, in the end, losses that its publisher would not sustain without Kennedy himself.

Founding

John F. Kennedy Jr., son of the assassinated president, had worked as a prosecutor in the Manhattan District Attorney's office before turning to publishing. With businessman Michael J. Berman he founded George in partnership with Hachette Filipacchi Magazines, launching the first issue in September 1995. Kennedy unveiled the magazine in New York on 7 September 1995, presenting it as a political magazine named after the first president. Creative director Matt Berman, no relation to the co-founder, devised the debut cover: the model Cindy Crawford dressed as George Washington, photographed by Herb Ritts. The image was widely discussed and set the magazine's formula in a single picture — a celebrity body, a founding-era costume and a political idea treated as fashion.

The Formula

George departed deliberately from the format of traditional political publications, whose audience was people in or around politics. Its template was the celebrity glossy: large photography, personality profiles, interviews conducted by Kennedy himself and coverage that assumed glamour was a legitimate route into public life. Contributors ranged across the political and cultural spectrum and included Paul Begala, George Clooney, Kellyanne Conway, Ann Coulter, Al D'Amato, Lisa DePaulo, Al Franken, Stephen Glass, Rush Limbaugh, Norman Mailer, Chris Matthews, Steve Miller, Cathy Scott, W. Thomas Smith Jr., Jackie Stallone and Naomi Wolf. Few political magazines of the decade could have listed a liberal satirist, a conservative broadcaster and a film star between the same covers.

Notable Issues and Controversies

Kennedy used the magazine to court attention, and occasionally controversy. The July 1997 issue profiled New York mayor Rudy Giuliani. In 1997 Kennedy also used his editor's letter to attack his cousins Michael Kennedy and Joseph P. Kennedy II, whose marital scandals had made news, calling them poster boys for bad behaviour — a family rebuke delivered in print that drew national coverage. The September 1997 issue examined the conduct of those same cousins at length. A February 1997 issue billed as a survival guide to the future, in which Kennedy interviewed Microsoft founder Bill Gates, became one of the title's most remembered numbers. The magazine's media issues drew broadcast attention, with its editors discussing them on C-SPAN's Washington Journal in 1997 and 1998.

Reception and Criticism

Initial interest was intense, and for a short time George outsold every rival political magazine in the country, a performance attributed in large part to Kennedy's celebrity. Critics were divided from the start. Detractors called it a political magazine for people who did not understand politics and accused it of stripping discussion of political issues out of its coverage of politicians. Spy magazine, profiling George in its March 1998 issue, argued the premise was flawed because politics overlapped with popular culture in only a limited number of ways, and mocked the search for cover celebrities with some connection, however thin, to public affairs. Kennedy himself later complained that the magazine was not taken seriously within the publishing world — the paradox of a title whose fame was inseparable from the founder it needed readers to forget.

The Berman Break and Decline

By early 1997 Kennedy and Michael Berman were locked in a power struggle that colleagues described as escalating to shouting matches, slammed doors and a physical altercation. Berman sold his share of the company, Kennedy assumed his partner's responsibilities, and sales of the already declining magazine fell rapidly afterwards. Hachette's chief executive David Pecker later attributed the decline in part to editorial caution, saying Kennedy refused risks as an editor despite being a risk-taker elsewhere, and that he turned down interviews with figures attractive to the target 18-to-34 audience, such as Princess Diana or John Gotti Jr., in favour of subjects such as Dan Rostenkowski or the Vietnamese general Võ Nguyên Giáp. Shortly before his death Kennedy was planning online chats with the 2000 presidential candidates, with Microsoft providing technology in exchange for advertising.

Kennedy's Death and the End

John F. Kennedy Jr. died in July 1999 when the small plane he was piloting crashed, killing also his wife, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and her sister. Hachette Filipacchi purchased Kennedy's portion of the magazine from his estate and continued publication for more than a year with Frank Lalli as editor-in-chief. Without its founder's name and presence, and with advertising sales falling, the experiment could not be sustained. On 4 January 2001 Hachette's president, Jack Kliger, announced that George would close; the January 2001 issue is catalogued as its last, with the closure announcement anticipating a final issue in March. The magazine had published for just over five years.

Anniversary and Afterlife

In October 2005 the Harvard Kennedy School marked the tenth anniversary of the launch with a panel discussion titled after the magazine's tagline, "Not Just Politics as Usual," moderated by Tom Brokaw and attended by journalists who had worked on or covered the title — an institutional recognition that George, whatever its commercial fate, had marked a real change in how politics could be packaged. Back issues acquired a collector market. Most unexpectedly, the February 1997 Gates issue became sought after by adherents of the QAnon conspiracy theory, with a copy listed online at 3,499.99 dollars in 2022 — a fate, driven by the Kennedy name, that illustrated how completely the magazine's value had always rested on its founder's mythology.

Assessment

George's defenders argued that it anticipated the modern fusion of politics and entertainment, in which candidates are media personalities and coverage follows celebrity logic; its critics replied that it demonstrated the fusion's limits, since glamour could not supply a readership with reasons to care about governing. Both judgements drew on the same evidence — covers that treated politicians as stars and stars as political figures, reported by writers from across the spectrum, inside a magazine whose circulation rose and fell with one man's fame. The title's six-year arc made the test unusually clean: with Kennedy, the largest political magazine in America; without him, unsustainable within eighteen months.

Legacy

George remains the best-known American attempt to found a mass political magazine on a personality rather than a party, a doctrine or an institution. Published from New York by a major magazine house, written by contributors as different as Norman Mailer and Rush Limbaugh, and remembered through a handful of covers — Crawford as Washington above all — it documented the 1990s moment when politics completed its migration into lifestyle media. Its failure closed the experiment, but the conditions it diagnosed, an audience that met politics through celebrity, only deepened after its final issue.