End of an Era

Peter Kaplan, the fourth and longest-serving editor of The New York Observer, announced his resignation yesterday, marking yet another "end of an era" moments for the world of journalism:

The New York Times reports: Known for his soaring soliloquies about the city he loved but did not live in he resides in Westchester -- Kaplan is a modern version of the fedora-wearing newsman, a man who saw his paper as a weekly libretto rendered in glamour and noir. During his tenure the longest for an editor in the newspaper’s 22-year history, The Observer played large for its size, catching Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., when he was a presidential candidate, taking the measure of Barack Obama by saying he was “articulate and bright and clean”; getting an interview with Jayson Blair at a time when his reporting for The New York Times was coming apart; and all but creating a television and movie franchise with its “Sex and the City” column.

Former staffers said regardless of who is chosen, Kaplan’s departure would leave a gap in New York’s media landscape. Jim Windolf, a former Observer reporter who is now a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, said, “I think it seems depressing that we are living at a time when someone like Peter Kaplan is not running a major publication in New York. That just seems weird to me.”