Graydon Carter Net Worth

What is Graydon Carter's net worth and salary?

Graydon Carter is a Canadian-American journalist, editor, and entrepreneur who has a net worth of $30 million. Graydon Carter rose to prominence as the editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair magazine, a position he held for 25 years. Under his stewardship, Vanity Fair became one of the most influential cultural publications in the world, blending celebrity coverage with serious journalism, politics, and cultural criticism. Known for his distinctive persona—complete with his signature flowing white hair—Carter became as recognizable as many of the celebrities featured in his magazine. Through his editorial vision, restaurant ventures, and cultural influence, Carter embodied a particular idea of style and the good life during what many consider the last golden age of print magazines.

Early Life and Career Beginnings

Born Edward Graydon Carter on July 14, 1949, in Toronto, Canada, Carter grew up in Ottawa, a place where, as he put it, "everyone had a frostbite story." His childhood was filled with skiing, hockey, and encouragement from his mother, "a gifted Sunday painter," who supported his early interest in sketching. His father, a career pilot with the Royal Canadian Air Force, is described as both charismatic (likened to David Niven) and comically unrefined—known for his exuberant flatulence and extreme parsimony, once attempting to build a front fence by hammering bookshelves together.

Carter's early academic career was unexceptional. After high school, he worked in railroad maintenance in western Canada, an experience he described as military-like, with barracks living and diverse camaraderie. He attended two universities in Ottawa but left both without graduating. During this period of drift, he began working at The Canadian Review, a literary magazine with campus funding. When editorial changes unexpectedly placed him in charge, Carter showed early signs of his editorial instincts—notably disposing of poetry submissions, which he didn't appreciate beyond Lord Byron. Despite this unconventional approach, the magazine reached a circulation of 50,000 under his leadership—an impressive figure for Canada at that time.

The Time Inc. Years and Spy Magazine

Carter's entry into American journalism came through Time magazine in the late 1970s, where he held a mid-level writing position. Time represented Carter's first taste of the lavish magazine culture that would define much of his career. Expense accounts covered restaurant dinners and even family vacations, while Friday evenings featured dinner carts with hot food and wine rolling through the hallways, followed by company cars taking staffers home. It was during these years that Carter had his first Savile Row suit made.

At Time, Carter worked as a "floater," writing across various desks. The magazine's writing process was highly structured: Monday for assignments, Tuesday for correspondents to file reports, Wednesday for writing, followed by extensive editing that often left little of the original text intact. When Carter realized he wouldn't rise to prominence at Time like colleagues Walter Isaacson and Michiko Kakutani, he began looking for his next opportunity.

The turning point in Carter's career came in 1986 when he co-founded Spy magazine with Kurt Andersen, another Time alumnus. Spy captured the zeitgeist of 1980s New York with its satirical take on the city's social elite, celebrities, and power brokers. The magazine's tone, which Carter described as "bemused detachment, but witheringly judgmental," made it an immediate hit. Unlike zany humor publications such as Mad or National Lampoon, Spy was a reported fact-and-trend magazine with columns, features, and spreads in ironized forms.

Spy became known for giving its subjects unflattering recurring epithets: designer Bill Blass was "too-rich-and-too-fleshy," Henry Kissinger was "socialite war criminal," and Donald Trump—Spy's perpetual target—was famously labeled a "short-fingered vulgarian." The magazine's approach to satire created a sense of community among readers who delighted in seeing the powerful and pretentious taken down a notch. Carter co-edited Spy for five years before moving on to lead the New York Observer in 1991.

Vanity Fair Years

Carter's success at the Observer caught the attention of S.I. Newhouse, chairman of Condé Nast, who initially offered Carter the editorship of either Vanity Fair or The New Yorker in 1992. Carter chose The New Yorker, even creating an 18-month plan for the magazine's transformation (referring to it in code as "the Pencil" to avoid eavesdroppers in Manhattan restaurants). However, in a last-minute change, Newhouse and Tina Brown decided that Brown would take The New Yorker, leaving Vanity Fair to Carter—a switch that initially displeased him, having previously mocked the magazine in Spy as "breathy and incestuous."

The first two years at Vanity Fair were, by Carter's own admission, "pretty dreadful." He faced hostility from luxury advertisers who remembered his barbs from Spy, inherited a backlog of unpublishable material, and dealt with a staff that seemed to resent his presence. The atmosphere was so toxic that he wouldn't bring his family to the office, and rumors of his firing circulated before his first issue appeared. One notable early crisis involved Norman Mailer's convention coverage, which Carter deemed so weak that he killed both assignments while paying Mailer's substantial fee in full, resulting in the author storming out of his office.

Vanity Fair Salary

When Newhouse originally offered Carter the editorship of The New Yorker in 1992, his starting salary was set at $600,000—equivalent to about $1.4 million in today's dollars. This substantial compensation reflected both the prestige of the position and the golden era of magazine publishing, when top editors commanded salaries comparable to those of corporate executives. By the end of his run, Carter was reportedly earning around $2 million per year.

Condé Nast offered extraordinary perks to its editors-in-chief, including interest-free home loans and a policy that essentially amounted to "no budget"—that is, no ceiling on expenses. Senior editors each had their own assistant, and employees were sent home in town cars when work ran late. Meal expenses were covered for breakfasts and lunches, and photo shoots featured craft services on par with movie sets. When covering major events like the O.J. Simpson trial, Carter could station correspondent Dominick Dunne at the Chateau Marmont for the entire eight-month proceedings, even flying out editors to help Dunne complete his articles when he struggled to file.

Editorial Style and Influence

As an editor, Carter described himself as nonconfrontational, focusing more on talent management than technical editing. "My philosophy has always been that if you take care of the talent," he explained, "you'll get better work." He believed that great magazine stories required a combination of narrative, access, conflict, and disclosure—a simple but effective formula that guided his editorial decisions.

Carter's first major hire at Vanity Fair was Christopher Hitchens, who contributed columns on politics, literature, and culture until his death in 2011. Under Carter's leadership, the magazine developed a distinctive voice: less frenzied than Tina Brown's approach, more skeptical and reserved, perhaps more masculine in its sensibilities. Vanity Fair became known for its literary reporting, investigative journalism, and its eye for glamour with a darkened edge. A major journalistic coup came in 2005 when the magazine beat Washington Post legends Woodward and Bernstein to the public identification of Deep Throat.

The magazine became increasingly associated with Hollywood under Carter's stewardship. After Irving "Swifty" Lazar's death in 1993, Carter established Vanity Fair's now-legendary Oscar party at Morton's restaurant—initially conceived as an intimate dinner that gave celebrities a rare opportunity to socialize with peers outside of film sets. The annual event, along with the magazine's Hollywood issue and "New Establishment List" of power rankings, became institutions that extended Vanity Fair's cultural influence.

Restaurateur and Beyond Magazines

Carter's natural affinity for dining and hosting eventually led him into the restaurant business. In the mid-2000s, he rejuvenated the Waverly Inn and later the Monkey Bar, turning them into celebrity haunts that reflected his understanding of exclusivity as a commodity. His approach to dining mirrored his editorial philosophy: careful curation, attention to detail, and a clear vision of when things should end—"the minute dessert hit the table," as he insisted. He notably once hosted Princess Margaret for dinner in his apartment, where she stayed past midnight—an experience he considered one of the "great traumas of his life."

By 2008, Carter began noticing changes in the publishing industry as the recession hammered media companies. By the mid-2010s, he saw fundamental shifts underway as organizations streamlined operations. "I could see the shape of things to come," he wrote, and in 2017, after 25 years at Vanity Fair, he resigned. The announcement was so shocking to some of his friends that when alerts popped up on their phones, they assumed he had died.

Following his departure, Carter relocated with his wife and youngest child to the French Riviera, taking along his chief assistant from Vanity Fair (who was tasked with traveling with Carter's dog). He gave up smoking, took up swimming, and entertained guests like Bette Midler. However, retirement proved short-lived—he soon found himself bored and began thinking about new ventures.

Air Mail

In 2019, Carter launched Air Mail, a cosmopolitan digital media company co-founded with journalist Alessandra Stanley. While email newsletters seemed retrograde at the time, Carter's timing proved prescient—the format was invulnerable to social media algorithms, and Air Mail has since attracted over 500,000 subscribers.

The publication, which delivers a weekend email newsletter featuring deeply reported features, travel recommendations, and shopping tips, has established itself as a digital heir to the sophisticated, worldly approach Carter cultivated at Vanity Fair. With 34 full-time employees based in New York and contributors in Milan, Paris, and London, Air Mail has expanded its reach beyond journalism into lifestyle and retail.

The company has diversified its offerings through a series of ventures, including an online store called Air Supply, which sells branded merchandise like hats and tote bags alongside upscale items such as brass "comfortmeters" and Portuguese pencils. In a nod to traditional media, Air Mail also opened a brick-and-mortar storefront—Air Mail Newsstand—in New York's West Village, offering curated sundries including stationery from Kyoto and artisanal soaps.

Air Mail's expansion into podcasting includes "Table for Two" with Bruce Bozzi, a show with Mark Seal based on his book about the making of "The Godfather," and plans for a literary podcast hosted by actress Emma Roberts. These ventures reflect Carter's continued influence in connecting different spheres of media, entertainment, and culture.

The company has attracted significant investment, raising $32 million from figures in finance and media, including David Zaslav, CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery and a friend of Carter's, as well as TPG and RedBird Capital Partners. As of early 2025, Air Mail has hired the boutique investment bank Raine Group to explore a potential sale following interest from buyers, though these talks are still in early stages. Previous discussions with Standard Investments, which reportedly valued the company at $50 million, are no longer active. According to sources, Carter plans to maintain his involvement with Air Mail even if a sale occurs, suggesting his continued commitment to the editorial vision he has cultivated throughout his career.

Personal Life

In his personal life, Carter has been married three times and has five children. His persona as a man about town—dining at exclusive restaurants, attending the most prestigious cultural events, and moving easily among the power elite—became part of his professional brand.

Real Estate

In 1998, Graydon paid $2 million for a 4,000-square-foot townhouse located at 22 Bank Street in New York City's Greenwich Village. He sold this townhouse in 2019 for $17.4 million in an off-market deal to producer Scott Rudin.

After selling the townhouse, Graydon paid $3.42 million for a 2-bedroom coop apartment in Greenwich Village. Almost immediately after closing on that unit, he paid roughly the same amount for an adjoining unit.

In 2004, Graydon paid $1.4 million for a 49-acre property in Roxbury, Connecticut. Today, this home is worth around $5-10 million.