Peter Kaplan, the former editor of the New York Observer, died on Friday. He was 59.
His brother, James, confirmed with the New York Times that he died.
He said that the cause was cancer.
Kaplan, who spent 15 years with the publication, moved on to working for Fairchild Publications, which oversaw Women’s Wear Daily, Menswear, Footwear News, and other publications.
In 2009, when Kaplan announced his departure from the Observer, he cited family reasons.
“I wanted to take care of my family,” he said. “My family has been—it sounds like a baseball thing, doesn’t it?—relegated to a secondary part of my life for a while.”
While working as editor for the Observer, he said it was the best job he’s ever had.
“It’s as good as it gets,” he said in the interview. “I had a little newspaper in New York City! You can’t beat that. No matter who you are. I had a little newspaper in New York City. That’s as good as it gets. It’s better to have a little newspaper in New York City than a big newspaper in New York City. Because then you only have to report and write for the people you care about. And nobody else.”
He took over the Observer in 1987.
He said, “What I came in with was the hope The Observer could create a kind of intrinsic New York wit with its reporting that no one else did. That’s why we put the illustrators on the cover. The entire paper is a point of view, a hard-edged view of New York that combines the idea of power and point of view. That’s what the paper is. That’s what the Web site is. That’s why the headlines are written the way they are.”
