In order to obtain a copy of Michael M Grynbaum’s Empire of the Elite: Inside Condé Nast, the Media Dynasty That Reshaped the World, I asked a Financial Times intern if she would mind awfully running over to the nearest bookshop and getting it for me.
As an editorial habit, this is not my custom. It’s now largely frowned upon to make one’s junior colleagues fetch and carry things. Consider, then, the caprices of Vanity Fair’s Graydon Carter, for example, whose jazz-filled “blond wood office” resembled a mid-century movie set.
