Peter Kaplan

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

The death of Peter Kaplan, coming at a time when the end of newspapers is a daily prediction, is a reminder of why so many of us are determined to hold out as long as we can. He built in the Observer a jewel of a newspaper of the classical kind and edited it brilliantly for the better part of a generation, establishing a circulation of 50,000 in the heart of the press capital of the world, and, importantly, handing up a generation of newspapermen and newspaperwomen who have either stayed with the Observer or carried on to other publications Kaplan’s sense of craft and integrity.

We didn’t know Kaplan well personally. But we don’t mind saying that at some point between 2002 and 2008, there came a moment when it was suggested that it might be a good idea to at least explore the idea of a merger of the Observer and the Sun. So the two editors, both in town from Harvard, met at the bar of a mid-town club. What Kaplan took from the meeting we don’t know. But what we took from it was the sense that it would be hard to merge the two papers without sacrificing either Kaplan’s vision or our own. And what was the logic, virtue, or even point of that?

The fact is that we enjoyed the Observer just like it was, even though it differed from our own take on the city and the wider world. Eventually, Arthur Carter, who had backed Kaplan for so long and so well, sold the Observer to, in Jared Kushner, a new proprietor with his own strong vision. In Kaplan we sensed a kindred spirit — he seemed, at least to us, to be the kind of editor who drew satisfaction from making stars of others. He certainly made more stars shine than any editor’s normal share. The Observer, in its obituary for Kaplan, wrote of the paper’s “frantic closes, trying to beat the New York Sun to the printer.” Let us just say the regard was mutual.


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