The New York Observer’s new editor Ken Kurson wrote this week that the paper intends to “continue to own the microcommunities of power” of New York City. Last night, members of those microcommunities celebrated the paper’s 25th anniversary at The Four Seasons. Mayor Bloomberg, Donald and Melania Trump, Katie Holmes, Wendi Murdoch, Observer owner and publisher Jared Kushner, and his wife Ivanka Trump all circled up near the entrance to the pool room, chatting, cheek-kissing, and creating a general phalanx of flashbulbs.
The always modest and unbiased Donald Trump said this week’s issue of his son-in-law’s paper (which includes him among “The Most Influential New Yorkers of the Past 25 Years”) was probably his favorite ever. “I picked up the paper. I read the most vibrant paper and I called Jared. I said, ‘This paper is vibrant.’ The last issue was so great. Not because I was in it, by the way. It was just so great. And I said, ‘You’ve really done a great job, because it was so vibrant.’”
Trump’s daughter Ivanka — who appears on this week’s “25 to Watch” list — had to agree. Asked about her favorite Observer story of all time, she didn’t miss a beat. “Well, I think this recent issue was amazing. It’s everything that the Observer stands for, profiling the relevant people doing so with a specific voice, a real sass. So I think it was just a really representative issue, also for the future and what’s going to happen under the new editor, Ken.”
Wendi Murdoch said she started reading the Observer, especially the arts section online, more once Kushner took over, because they are friends. Plus, she said, when it came to coverage of her own affairs over the last few years, “other newspapers were much, much tougher.”
