Meet George: An Oral History of JFK Jr.’s Political Magazine Launch

Sasha Issenberg: I had just finished ninth grade and started probably right at the end of May 1995. Gary Ginsburg, who was a senior editor, was a friend of my aunt’s, and somehow she wrangled an introduction. I went in and saw Gary one afternoon at his office at 1633 Broadway. I only learned in retrospect that John had seen me walking out of Gary’s office and started ribbing Gary, like, “Gary, who is that? Is that your son?” Gary said, “No, that’s some kid who came in to ask me for a job.” And John said, “Oh my God, he looks just like your son. You have to hire him!”

Matt Berman: I heard JFK Jr. was all over town, selling his magazine. I was happy working and doing great things at Elle, and kind of kept tabs on it. When John finally expressed real interest in Hachette Filipacchi, they set him up in a conference room with Michael [Berman] and Rose [Marie Terenzio]. [Hachette Filipacchi, which also published Elle] put me in the conference room with them, and I was supposed to get them off the ground—design the logo, design the prototype, everything they needed to sell the magazine to advertisers. I didn’t think it was anything more than helping them get started. We were all very young, and we just had a rapport and laughed a lot. I didn’t have a sense of how big this thing might be.

David Janke: I started with Herb [Ritts] in January 1994, and I stayed with him all the way until March of 2001. Herb didn’t share any details about that first cover shoot ahead of time. Nobody said anything to anybody. It was really hush-hush.

Jake Chessum: I lived in London and had been shooting for a lot of trendy magazines—The Face and Arena. And in the early months of ’95, my agent called me and said, “Oh, we’ve had this call from this guy Matt in New York. He’s starting a magazine called George.” I was intrigued, but the level of reverence that John Kennedy Jr. had was not the same in England…because it’s England.

​​Kate Harrington: I first met John on a boat trip along the Turkish coast with Truman, John’s Aunt Lee [Radziwill], John’s mom, John, his sister, and Lee’s two children, Tony and Tina. On that trip, John was the only one of the four other children on board who showed me any kindness. He went out of his way to include me in the kids’ boat fun and educated me discreetly about the ways of yacht life. This cemented our lifelong friendship. Later, I had moved to LA from New York, after working for five years with Andy Warhol at Interview as their fashion stylist, to work exclusively for Herb Ritts as his stylist for 11 years. I was delighted when John flew out to LA to have dinner with me at The Ivy to conceive the best cover we could dream up!

Chapter 2

“It Was Very Much a Start-Up”: Building George From Scratch

RoseMarie Terenzio: It was a little rocky there for a minute. We moved from our little office on 26th and Fifth to Hachette in Times Square and started out, just the three of us, in a conference room with no desks, one phone. It was very much a start-up environment.