Alan Halpern, magazine editor
December 15, 2005|By Gayle Ronan Sims
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
Alan Halpern, 79, of Society Hill, editor of Philadelphia
Magazine from 1951 to 1980, died of renal failure Tuesday at Thomas
Jefferson University
Hospital .
Described in a 1988 Inquirer story as "shy and soft-spoken,
a cigarette addict who seemed to hide in a cloud of smoke," Mr. Halpern
suffered from heart disease the last several years.
When Mr. Halpern - newly returned from Paris ,
where he had worked for a picture magazine while attending the Sorbonne - joined
the magazine, he was the only one in the office. He did the writing, editing,
makeup and design. The magazine featured little more than puff pieces on Philadelphia
businesses.
Philadelphia Magazine began to change with the ascent of D.
Herbert Lipson as publisher in 1961. Under Lipson, who now owns the magazine,
Mr. Halpern made Philadelphia
something of a local sensation. It began publishing in-depth investigative
stories in a free-wheeling style Mr. Halpern encouraged.
"He was a very quiet leader. Alan was inspirational . .
. he cultivated writers," Philadelphia
editor Larry Platt said yesterday. "He was not a field general."
In the 1970s, Mr. Halpern took the magazine in a different
direction. It catered to affluent, status-conscious readers and began to list
the city's "best" and "worst." The approach worked. By
1978, circulation had doubled to 137,000, and other city magazines copied
Halpern's style.
The relationship between Lipson and Mr. Halpern, despite
their successes over the years, was strained.
"He threatened to quit on a regular basis. Then he
would come back in a couple of hours," Lipson said yesterday. "He
would bring in a list of story ideas, and I couldn't wait to see them in print.
He had a different perspective. He was brilliant."
Mr. Halpern quit in earnest in 1980. Afterward, he consulted
for a number of magazines, including Atlantic City .
A 1943 graduate of West
Philadelphia High School ,
Mr. Halpern spent a year in the Merchant Marine before earning a bachelor's
degree in English from the University
of Pennsylvania in 1947. He lived
in Paris for a couple of years
before returning to Philadelphia in
1950 and married Sara Bomberger.
In addition to his wife, Mr. Halpern is survived by a
brother, Edward.
A memorial service is being planned. Burial is private.
Contact staff writer Gayle Ronan Sims at 215-854-4185 or
gsims@phillynews.com.
Broad Street Review http://www.broadstreetreview.com/main/article/Alan_Halpern_Stealth_revolutionary
Alan Halpern: Stealth revolutionary
BY: Dan
Rottenberg 2006
Alan Halpern, editor of Philadelphia Magazine from
1951 to 1980 and father of the modern city magazine, died December 13th at age
79.
In the age of TV, he galvanized the printed word.
DAN ROTTENBERG
When Alan Halpern became editor
of Philadelphia Magazine in 1951, magazines were largely a national
phenomenon. It was the heyday of Life, Look and the Saturday Evening
Post. City magazines and local alternative weeklies as we know them today
didn’t exist.
Amid this intellectual torpor, Halpern
seemed an unlikely revolutionary. He was a shy introvert who once described
himself as “a hermit progressing to a recluse.” Like another famous introverted
editor— William Shawn of the New Yorker— Halpern shrank from direct
engagement with the world and so relied instead on his writers to feed his
curiosity.
In the process, Halpern invented the modern urban monthly
magazine — stylish, sophisticated and abrasively irreverent toward the local
establishment — and consequently changed the face of American journalism.
During Halpern’s 29 years as editor, Philadelphia
evolved from a Chamber of Commerce puff sheet with no editorial budget and just
6,000 readers to an innovator in investigative reporting and finally to a fat
and trendy merchandising tool with 142,000 paid circulation by the time he left
in 1980.
Long before I knew Halpern personally—
and long before I moved to Philadelphia
and went to work for him— I knew him through his pioneering magazine. In the
late ’60s and early ’70s I was a reporter and editor in Chicago —
a heady time and place for a journalist, what with Mayor Richard J. Daley, Hugh
Hefner, the police riot at the ’68
Democratic convention, the Chicago Seven conspiracy trial
and the police murder of sleeping Black Panthers. Yet my inspiration in those
days came not from Chicagoans but from the monthly arrival of Philadelphia magazine
in my mail. Those were the days when Philadelphia’s Gaeton Fonzi stood up
to such local powers as Walter Annenberg and
the Inquirer’s extortionist reporter Harry Karafin, when Greg Walter
exposed graft and child abuse at the Pearl Buck Foundation, when Nancy Love
delved into previously taboo subjects like swinger parties, when Charles
McNamara and Bernard McCormick poked their inquisitive noses into all sorts of
corners — from education to transportation— and brought esoteric subjects to
life with the sort of wry sophistication later cornered by the New
Yorker’s John McPhee.
Operating in an uptight, stodgy and
self-deprecating city, Philadelphia ’s writers
brought style and wit to every subject, no matter how mundane. But the real
difference between Philadelphia and
other publications in those days was the difference between a movie and a
lecture. Instead of reporting the dry facts about suburban burglaries and urban
prostitution, Philadelphia ’s writers
portrayed the night’s work of a fictitious “composite” burglar and prostitute,
based on real people. They wrote not as objective journalists but as passionate
humans sharing their excitement about their subjects. They even inserted
themselves into their stories. In Fonzi’s dissection of Annenberg, flashbacks
recounting the mighty publisher’s abuses of his power were interspersed with
flash-forward scenes describing Fonzi’s own attempts to interview Annenberg;
such was the tension generated by this device that the reader damn near jumped
out of his skin in anticipation of the ultimate confrontation between the
reporter and his quarry.
At that time, you bought Philadelphia magazine
not to read specific stories (which were rarely spotlighted on the cover) or
writers (who weren’t even listed in the table of contents), but for the general
expectation that anything you read in any issue would surprise, delight, shock
or fascinate you. In this manner Philadelphia introduced
its readers to a broad range of important subjects that wouldn’t otherwise have
interested them— which is perhaps a journalist’s most important task. An
informed public may be the foundation of a healthy society, but information is
like medicine: It does no good unless people swallow it. People didn’t merely
swallow Philadelphia ; they
gobbled it up voraciously.
The magazine’s appeal, incidentally, lay
almost entirely in its words. Aside from a few illustrations thrown in as an
afterthought, Philadelphia offered no design, no color, no glitzy layouts
and picture spreads, really nothing to please the eye until the mid-’70s at the
earliest. Philadelphia then
was a testament to the sheer delight of the written word.
In time, of course, Philadelphia ’s techniques
were copied and even improved by other city magazines (most notably New
York and Texas Monthly) and then
appropriated by newspapers (especially in their so-called “style” and
“magazine” sections). In time, Halpern’s original writers drifted off to other
careers, to be replaced by new generations of Halpern protégés. In time,
Halpern and his publisher, Herb Lipson— like many another editor-publisher
team— came to resent each other as each grew embittered by the other’s failure
to appreciate his contribution to the magazine’s success. And in time Halpern
left Philadelphia and launched
a new mentoring career as a consultant to such new magazine ventures
as Manhattan inc., Avenue, Philly Sport, Applause and Seven
Arts.
Halpern got into magazine journalism at
just the time when most Americans were abandoning newspapers for television as
their primary means of connecting with the world. Magazines were perceived then
as the fun-and-games corner of the journalism
business, certainly less essential than either newspapers or
TV. But the trouble with TV is, you don’t have to think in order to watch it.
By contrast, even a tabloid newspaper or a pornographic novel requires you to
exercise your mind by converting abstract symbols— letters— into words and
sentences. Two generations of American TV-watchers were largely spared this
level of mental training, which may explain the widespread inability of
Americans under 50 to think analytically about civic or global issues.
The solution was to rekindle a hunger
for reading— the same kind of hunger that Philadelphia magazine
first kindled in readers like me back in the ’60s. For nearly half a century,
while most Americans were succumbing to the siren song of TV, Alan Halpern was
galvanizing readers of the printed word and teaching other writers and editors
to do the same.
Halpern died on December 13th at the age
of 79, just as television was at last being displaced by the Internet as
Americans’ first line of connection to the world. Rarely has the timing of an
individual’s career coincided so closely with the world’s need for his
services.
Alan Halpern
On December 13th, Alan Halpern, editor of Philly Mag from
1951 through 1980, passed away. He made this magazine America ’s
most honored regional publication and, along the way, created the city magazine
genre. The author, a Halpern protégé and currently a correspondent for GQ
magazine, remembers the man and his vision.
He was my mentor. And my tormentor.
And those were just two of the reasons why I loved Alan
Halpern, why we all loved Alan Halpern, even when we wanted to strangle him.
Like a great many others, I owe my career to the man. Because he never let me
forget how good I was. Or how bad I was. That was Alan’s gift.
“Dear Lisa,” he wrote in a recent e-mail. “I saw you on TV.
What crap.” Then two weeks later: “Happy Thanksgiving!” with a cheesy Jacquie
Lawson e-mail card and a dancing turkey.
I was 21 years old when I first entered the Alan Halpern
orbit, joining a cult of writers who considered him their guru. It was a
privileged and bizarro group, consisting of terribly talented (and fucked-up)
writers all over the land who had one thing in common: Alan’s acceptance. There
are dozens of us, some successful, some not, some dead, some who just seem to
be. Alan didn’t care. He didn’t care if you hung a bamboo swag lamp in your
office and slept there at night (you know who you are), or if you had sex with
each other on the office sofa. As long as you had “nifty ideas” and cared about
this crazy world of magazine journalism as much as he did. If he liked
something you wrote, you’d get a “terrific!” in the margin. If he liked it a
lot, two terrifics. And if he loved it, “Terrific! Terrific! Terrific!”
I lived for three terrifics from Alan Halpern.
He taught me all the important things: That the only person
I was writing for was the reader. Not my editors (not even him!), not my
friends, and not the subject, either. That it was okay to fall in love
(metaphorically, of course) with my subject, as long as I divorced him at the
typewriter. And that you should never have lunch without a cocktail.
Alan used to say (long before anyone else did), “Never let
the facts get in the way of a good story.” The journalism police didn’t like that
very much. But Alan was correct. In his brilliant, iconoclastic way, nothing
was more important than the telling of the story.
His was one that should have been told a hundred times, and
in regions far beyond Broad Street .
Alan invented city magazines, but never got the credit. He put up with our
demanding chairman, Herb Lipson, for years — decades! — and lived to tell the
tale.
Actually, deep down, I believe Alan always secretly loved
Herb; like all great love affairs, it was terribly complicated. He never did
get over the fact that he created this magazine, but was forever
banished from the kingdom after 30 years. Two months before his death, Elliott
Curson, his lifelong pal the ad guy, sent a breaking-news e-mail out. Alan and
Herb, photographed together, having a make-up lunch at the Palm. It only
took them 25 years.
He nurtured me and tortured me, too, since that day, 23
years ago, when I went to work for $50 a week at Atlantic
City magazine, for one reason only: I had heard
he was “consulting” on this goofy little magazine, and I was determined to work
for the Legendary Alan Halpern. My first day on the job, he instructed me to
“go walk up and down the beach and interview the lifeguards.” Great work if you
can get it. He ended up running the results of my hard labor as a cover story
on “the Myth of the Atlantic City Lifeguard.” Alan saw a story
in everything. And, for better or worse, he made me look at life the same
way.
Originally published in Philadelphia
Magazine, January 2006
MacNAMARA
CHARLES "CHUCK" Before Google there was Chuck MacNamara. MacNamara, one of the editors who helped pioneer the city magazine concept at Philadelphia Magazine, died
He was known for his extra-ordinary range of knowledge and
memory for detail. A 1957 cum laude University
of Pennsylvania graduate, he joined
Philadelphia Magazine in 1959, and was legendary editor Alan Halpern's right
hand man as the magazine grew from an obscure business magazine called Greater
Philadelphia Magazine to a publication which won national acclaim in the 1960s.
MacNamara wrote entertainingly about often obscure or historic subjects, complementing
the work of investigative reporters such
as Gaeton Fonzi and Greg Walter.
It was MacNamara who introduced his Penn classmate Fonzi to
the magazine. He helped invent sections such as "Top Docs" and
"Best and Worst" which have since been imitated by hundreds of local
magazines. MacNamara was a shareholder in Gold Coast Magazine in Fort
Lauderdale , Fl. in 1970 when it was bought by his
former Philadelphia Magazine colleague Bernard McCormick. After leaving
Philadelphia Magazine in the 1970s he wrote numerous articles over the years
for Gold Coast and other Florida
publications owned by the same company. His most recent piece was in the
January issue of Gold Coast. He also wrote an introduction to a
soon-to-be-published book on the birth of city magazines in Philadelphia .
MacNamara was born in Phila., and lived in Birmingham ,
Ala. before his family returned to the
Lansdowne area. After suffering polio as a teenager, he wore a leg brace for
the rest of his life and was confined to a wheel chair in recent years. He is
survived by sisters Barbara Lucash of Morrisville and Judith Anderson of Drexel
Hill : 3 nephews and a niece and 2 great nieces and a great nephew.
Chuck MacNamara wrote for Gold Coast magazine for 40
years. His most recent piece, ironically, was a reflection on the life of
former Florida Gov. Claude Kirk, who died in September. Chuck followed him last
week. The attached obit from today’s Philadelphia Inquirer mentions
that he was lame from polio, a word we rarely hear these days. It happened when
Chuck was 16 and a budding track star. He dragged an inert leg around for the
last 61 years. Eventually it put him a wheelchair. That handicap did not stop
him from working, first at Philadelphia Magazine, and for the last 35
years as a freelancer, often for our Florida
magazines.
He was an editor’s dream. His copy was almost always
flawless, never an inaccurate statement, rarely even a typo. You could call him
on short notice, as we did with the Claude Kirk piece, and ask if he had
anything for our Undercurrent section. Days later we got the piece.
Chuck liked a drink. One day at lunch at Bookbinder's across
from our office in Philadelphia , he
was on his third martini. A companion said, “Chuck, do you realize every time
you drink one of those see-thrus you kill 300,000 brain cells?” Chuck reflected
briefly, then slowly raised his glass, and, sipping, replied, “I just hope my
brain holds on as long as Winston Churchill’s.”
He did not quite make it. But he was close.
"MAC NAMARA
CHARLES ‘CHUCK’ Before Google there was Chuck MacNamara.
MacNamara, one of the editors who helped pioneer the city magazine concept
at Philadelphia Magazine, died Jan.
6, 2012 from heart failure at Morrisville Presbyterian Apartments
in Morrisville , Pa.
He was known for his extra-ordinary range of knowledge and
memory for detail. A 1957 cum laude University
of Pennsylvania graduate, he
joined Philadelphia Magazine in 1959, and was legendary editor Alan
Halpern's right hand man as the magazine grew from an obscure business magazine
called Greater Philadelphia Magazine to a publication which won
national acclaim in the 1960s. MacNamara wrote entertainingly about often
obscure or historic subjects, complementing the work of investigative reporters
such as Gaeton Fonzi and Greg Walter. It was MacNamara who introduced his Penn
classmate Fonzi to the magazine. He helped invent sections such as ‘Top Docs’
and ‘Best and Worst’ which have since been imitated by hundreds of local
magazines.
MacNamara was a shareholder in Gold Coast
magazine in Fort Lauderdale ,
Fl. in 1970 when it was bought by his former Philadelphia
Magazine colleague Bernard McCormick.
After leaving Philadelphia Magazine in the 1970s
he wrote numerous articles over the years for Gold Coast and other Florida
publications owned by the same company. His most recent piece was in the
January issue of Gold Coast. He also wrote an introduction to a
soon-to-be-published book on the birth of city magazines in Philadelphia .
MacNamara was born in Phila., and lived in Birmingham ,
Ala. before his family returned to the
Lansdowne area. After suffering polio as a teenager, he wore a leg brace for
the rest of his life and was confined to a wheel chair in recent years. He is
survived by sisters Barbara Lucash of Morrisville and Judith Anderson of Drexel
Hill : 3 nephews and a niece and 2 great nieces and a great
nephew."
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