Remembering the 35-Year Reign of the New Yorker’s Mr. Shawn

Business pages in recent weeks have busied themselves with the latest ticks in the life of the New Yorker. The stories boil down to this:

The magazine, known to lose millions of dollars a year, still loses millions, despite a significant rise in circulation under editor Tina Brown.

The magazine, once an independent entity within the Newhouse family’s publishing empire, is becoming part of the Conde Nast stable of monthlies in a bid to give it added advertising strength in numbers.

As students of the New Yorker’s distinguished history know, there was an era, before the Newhouses bought the magazine in 1985, when it came out, week after week, amid solid commercial success. Advertising support for the magazine’s mix of serious reportage and knowing commentary was grand, rising to nearly 4,500 ad pages in 1981 (compared with 2,142 last year).

William Shawn, the fastidious and exacting “Mr. Shawn,” presided as editor. It’s a measure of Shawn’s profound influence on the magazine and on the writers whom he cultivated and edited during a 35-year reign that he will be the subject of not one but two new books in the spring, having figured in several others already.

The more surprising of the pair is sure to be Lillian Ross’ “Here But Not Here,” in which the longtime New Yorker staff writer will reveal that she and the famously shy Shawn enjoyed a romantic relationship for 40 years, and even raised a child together. Indeed, at one point, the two set up a home near the Manhattan apartment where Shawn lived with his wife and children--and did so with Mrs. Shawn’s knowledge.

To quote from the Random House catalog, Ross will describe how, “to escape their developing liaison,” she moved to Hollywood and wrote the pieces that became “Picture,” a portrait of movie making published in 1952 (and recently reissued by the Modern Library).

Random House, also owned by the Newhouses, plans to run ads for the June book in the New Yorker.

Meanwhile, in May, the Overlook Press will publish an additional volume in the memoirs of former New Yorker mainstay Ved Mehta, this one called “Remembering Mr. Shawn’s New Yorker.” Of gossipy interest in the book is Mehta’s recollection that Ross, then 41, enlisted his help in 1959 as she sought to adopt a child in Asia. Mehta, a native of India, does not link Shawn to Ross’ quest, except to quote her as saying: “I saw a picture of a small, Buddha-like man with a soft, gentle face and delicate features, a little like Mr. Shawn. That’s exactly the kind of baby I want.”

The episode is almost a footnote in Mehta’s memoir, which is accurately subtitled “The Invisible Art of Editing.” The book explores the extraordinary degree of precision and the word-by-word respect that Shawn, who used to type his takeout-lunch orders from Chock Full o’ Nuts, brought to his labors as editor.

Shawn died in 1992 at age 85. These two new books will enlarge his legend.

Variety Readies N.Y. Daily The New York Observer, New York magazine, Mediaweek, the New York Post . . . and now there’s still more home-grown coverage of media and entertainment--a New York edition of Daily Variety.

Daily Variety Gotham--not to be confused with Daily Variety, a Los Angeles paper, or weekly Variety, will start publishing March 16.

A pitch that Cahners Publishing Co. recently sent to prospective subscribers of its newest venture says that the weekday paper will be “the Big Apple’s daily entertainment bible.” Management has added former Adweek editor Richard Morgan and two other reporters to what is now a 12-person editorial staff in Manhattan, led by New York editor Martin Peers.

Titanic Interest in ‘Titanic’ The powerful tide of viewer interest that has kept “Titanic” chugging forward at the box office has pushed no less than seven related books onto the New York Times’ national best-seller list.

Both the $50 hardcover and the $20 paperback editions of the authorized keepsake, “James Cameron’s Titanic” (both HarperCollins), will remain on Sunday’s list, the latter at No. 1 among nonfiction paperbacks. Joining the list will be Grace Catalano’s “Leonardo” (Dell), a scrapbook of pix and text about Leonardo DiCaprio, the film’s teen heartthrob. Catalano’s other current best-seller is her bio of lovable Leo, “Leonardo DiCaprio: Modern-Day Romeo” (Laurel-Leaf / Dell).

Among the other “Titanic” tie-ins vying for best-seller status is a clever non-book published by Random House: “Titanic: The Official Story” is a game-size box containing photocopied reproductions of official documents, such as the ship’s registry. and a frightening radio-telegram: “We have struck iceberg sinking fast come to our assistance.”

Still to come: Hollywood Reporter writer Paula Parisi’s still-untitled book from Newmarket Press on the three years it took to make the movie and Marc Shapiro’s “Total Titanic,” subtitled “The Most Up-to-Date Guide to the Disaster of the Century,” to be published by Byron Preiss Multimedia and distributed by Simon & Schuster.

* Paul D. Colford is a columnist for Newsday. His e-mail address is paul.colford@newsday.com. His column is published Thursdays.