Volume 78/Number 4
Fall 1998
Tennessee Alumnus
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Back In Tennessee Hands

Editor David Granger strives to make venerable Esquire magazine "absolutely relevant."

By Stephanie Piper

As a newcomer to New York City, David Granger (Knoxville '78) would often station himself on the sidewalk in front of 2 Park Avenue. At the time (1982), the building was the headquarters of Esquire magazine, edited and published by fellow UT alums Chris Whittle and Phillip Moffitt. "As an undergraduate at UT, I used to read this little magazine they had created called Nutshell," Granger recalls. "When I read they had bought Esquire, it just amazed me-that these two guys from the college I was attending could buy this big venerable magazine and move to New York and be players."
A job at Esquire "seemed like a natural thing when I first got to New York," Granger says. But his sidewalk vigil took some time to produce results. Fifteen years later, he is editor of Esquire. He still hasn't met Whittle or Moffitt.

The son of a college professor, Granger grew up in college and university towns. When his father was made dean of the School of Social Work at UT, the family moved to Knoxville. Granger finished high school here and headed for the Hill.

"UT was the perfect place for me," he says. "My father had generally taught in state universities and there was an assumption that that was the finest education you could get. It still seems so foreign to me, people stressing about where to go to college and where to send their kids to college."

Granger majored in history and English and worked as a resident assistant in the dorms. Then, anticipating a career in academe, he went on for a master's degree in English at the University of Virginia.

"I realized about a year into graduate school that I didn't want to teach," he says. "But I stuck it out and got the master's."

After a brief return to Knoxville, where he ran UTK's Greve residence hall for a year, and a year in Chicago, Granger enrolled in the Radcliffe College Publishing Procedures Course. The summer program was an introduction to book and magazine publishing, and it eventually led him to New York.

"I struggled for months to find a job," he recalls. "I finally went to work for Welsh Publishing, this little office that basically did magazines for anyone who needed one.

"It was a great education. The full time staff, including ad sales, was six people. That's the kind of job that teaches you how magazines get done."

Granger's first assignment was on Muppet Magazine. One of his fondest memories, he says, is his stint as book columnist Rowlf the Dog.

When it was time to move on, he wrote a book on the history of the Heisman Trophy with John Walsh, now executive editor at ESPN.

Then, Granger says, he hopscotched around the magazine industry, working on everything from Family Weekly, a competitor of Parade Magazine, to several startup ventures.

"I helped start a magazine called Sports Inc., about the business of sports. That went out of business after a year and a half. Then I helped start National Sports Daily, which was supposed to be the Wall Street Journal of sports. That eventually folded, too."

The frequent job changes didn't discourage him, Granger says.

"There was never a period when I thought I had to get out of the business. It's an endlessly flexible business. Things are dying, things are being born. The only real challenge is finding the right job."

After serving as executive editor of both Adweek and MediaWeek, trade magazines for the advertising community, Granger landed at Gentleman's Quarterly.

"GQ gave me the opportunity to assign and edit great stories and bring along great writers who helped redefine feature writing over the past five to six years," he says.

It was ideal preparation for the Esquire post, which Granger calls "the job I was made to have."

He became editor in June 1997. The initial challenge, he says, has been "to take a magazine that has a vital history but that has been on the wane for a while and make it seem absolutely relevant."

The best way to do this, Granger believes, is "by telling people stories that affect their lives."

"Some are hard, journalistic stories, some are wonderful pieces of fiction, some are short vignettes. But the magazine has to go beyond that. It has to make you better at your life. Whether it's instruction in fashion, or wine, or music. Or this new section we started on tools. Or 'Green,' a new section about money."

The transition from editor to editor-in-chief has involved a certain amount of letting go–"I have to realize I've hired a highly competent staff and let them do their jobs"–although he still rates his day-to-day involvement in nitty-gritty detail as "way too much." But he's learning the art of "not being overwhelmed by the millions of details from managing a staff to how the magazine looks."

Granger is married to Melanie Dodson (Knoxville '79), and the couple have nine-year-old twin daughters. Although his parents moved to Colorado some years ago, Granger keeps a cabin on an East Tennessee lake where the family returns for occasional holidays. A New Yorker for close to 15 years, he says his memories of East Tennessee are good ones.

"UT helped me discover my intellectual possibilities," he says. "I wasn't much of a student in high school, but three professors at the University-Bruce Wheeler, Paul Pinckney, and Richard Marius-made me realize I had a mind."

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