Clay Felker

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Clay Schuette Felker is a magazine editor and journalist who founded New York Magazine in 1968.

Born on October 2, 1925, in Webster Groves, Felker went on to attend Duke University, where he edited the student newspaper, The Chronicle. After graduating in 1951, Felker went on to work as a sportswriter for Life Magazine. He later worked for TIME, Esquire, and the New York Herald Tribune. A long-time friend of Tom Wolfe, Felker was one of the early proponents of New Journalism. After founding New York in 1968, one of his first features was Wolfe's coverage of Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, a story Wolfe later expanded into his novel The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Felker resigned from New York following its hostile takeover by Rupert Murdoch in 1976.

Felker later became a lecturer at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley.

The columnist James Brady revealed on forbes.com (5 October 2006), that Felker, who has been battling throat and mouth cancer, is currently in a nursing home in New York City.

Felker was married to Leslie Blatt in 1949. In 1962 he married the actress and fashion model Pamela Tiffin (1942-) from whom he divorced in 1969. He married the writer Gail Sheehy in 1984.