Vanity Fair Pulled a Beyoncé to Keep Caitlyn Jenner's Cover Under Wraps

If you thought Beyoncé was the only game in town who could pull off a massive, undercover project with many hands involved and keep it secret till the end, allow yourself to be reintroduced to Vanity Fair, which managed to keep Caitlyn Jenner’s cover story from prying eyes for months until early this afternoon.

Reports Mashable:

For Vanity Fair, Jenner and her family, it marks the result of months of negotiations and work, as well as beefed up security to keep the story from leaking. The magazine hired security for the shoot and forced people to give up their cell phones to prevent anything from leaking. A spokesperson for VFtold Mashable that the magazine had been in talks with Caitlyn Jenner since January and did not give her any compensation for the exclusive.

The magazine was concerned about leaks and took security measures “every step of the way,” including on the photo shoot, in the VF editorial office and at the printing plant for the upcoming issue. The story and pictures were done on a single computer that was never connected to the Internet, with the assets put on a thumb drive every night and then deleted from the computer. The story was even hand-delivered to the printer.

As anyone who works in the media will attest, keeping even the most mundane, boring-as-fuck of secrets under wraps in modern times, when the option to diffuse content is literally at anyone’s fingertips 24/7, is nearly impossible, so what Vanity Fair was able to accomplish with Caitlyn is no small feat—especially given the years of speculation around her identity and eventual transition. Kudos to Gradon Carter and team for getting it right, and of course, to Jenner for allowing Vanity Fair to bring her to us in such a beautiful, groundbreaking light.