New York (magazine)

"New York Magazine" redirects here. For the eighteenth-century magazine, see The New-York Magazine.
Not to be confused with The New Yorker.
New York

June 8, 1970 issue
Editor Adam Moss
Categories General interest
Frequency bi-Weekly
Publisher New York Media, LLC
Total circulation
(2013)		 410,010[1]
First issue 1968
Country  United States
Based in New York City, New York
Language English
Website www.nymag.com
ISSN 0028-7369

New York is a bi-weekly magazine concerned with life, culture, politics, and style generally, and with a particular emphasis on New York City. Founded by Milton Glaser and Clay Felker in 1968 as a competitor to The New Yorker, it was brasher and less polite, and established itself as a cradle of New Journalism.[2] Over time, it became more national in scope, publishing many noteworthy articles on American culture by writers such as Tom Wolfe, Jimmy Breslin, Nora Ephron, Frank Rich, and John Heilemann.

In its current incarnation under editor-in-chief Adam Moss, "The nation's best and most-imitated city magazine is often not about the city—at least not in the overcrowded, traffic-clogged, five-boroughs sense", wrote then Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz, as the magazine has increasingly published political and cultural stories of national significance.[3]

Since its redesign and relaunch in 2004, the magazine has won more National Magazine Awards than any other publication, which includes the 2013 award for Magazine of the Year.[4] It was one of the first city magazines and one of the first dual-audience "lifestyle magazines", and its format and style have been emulated by some other American regional city publications.

In 2009, its paid and verified circulation was 408,622, with 95.8% of that coming from subscriptions. Its websites—NYmag.com, Vulture.com, The Cut, and Grub Street—receive visits from more than 14 million users per month.[5]

History

1960s

New York began life in 1963 as the Sunday-magazine supplement of the New York Herald Tribune newspaper. Edited by Clay Felker, the magazine showcased the work of several talented Tribune contributors, including Tom Wolfe, Barbara Goldsmith, and Jimmy Breslin.[6] Soon after the Tribune went out of business in 1966–67, Felker and his partner, Milton Glaser, purchased the rights with money loaned to them by C. Gerald Goldsmith (Barbara Goldsmith's husband at the time), and reincarnated the magazine as a stand-alone glossy. Joining them was managing editor Jack Nessel, Felker's number-two at the Herald Tribune. New York's first issue was dated April 8, 1968. Among the by-lines were many familiar names from the magazine's earlier incarnation, including Breslin, Wolfe (who wrote Tell if You're a Honk or a Wonk in the inaugural issue[7]), and George Goodman, a financial writer who wrote as "Adam Smith."

Within a year, Felker had assembled a team of contributors who would come to define the magazine's voice. Breslin became a regular, as did Gloria Steinem, who wrote the city-politics column, and Gail Sheehy. (Sheehy would eventually marry Felker, in 1984.) Harold Clurman was hired as the theater critic. Judith Crist wrote movie reviews. Alan Rich covered the classical-music scene. Barbara Goldsmith was a Founding Editor of New York magazine and the author of the widely imitated series, “The Creative Environment,” in which she interviewed such subjects as Marcel Breuer, I. M. Pei, George Balanchine, and Pablo Picasso about their creative process. Gael Greene, writing under the rubric "The Insatiable Critic," reviewed restaurants, cultivating a baroque writing style that leaned heavily on sexual metaphor. Woody Allen contributed a few stories for the magazine in its early years. The magazine's regional focus and innovative illustrations inspired numerous imitators across the country.[6]

1970s

Wolfe, a regular contributor, to the magazine, wrote a story in 1970 that for many defined the magazine (if not the age): "Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny's". The article described a benefit party for the Black Panthers, held in Leonard Bernstein's apartment, in a collision of high culture and low that paralleled New York magazine's ethos. In 1972, New York also launched Ms. magazine, which began as a special issue.[6] New West, a sister magazine on New York's model that covered California life, was also published for a few years in the 1970s.

Well into the 1970s, Felker continued to broaden the magazine's palette, covering Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal closely. In 1976, journalist Nik Cohn contributed a story called "Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night," about a young man in a working-class Brooklyn neighborhood who, once a week, went to a local disco called Odyssey 2001; the story was a sensation and served as the basis for the film Saturday Night Fever. Twenty years later, Cohn admitted (in a story in New York) that he'd done no more than drive by Odyssey's door, and that he'd made the rest up. It was a recurring problem of what Wolfe, in 1972, had labeled "The New Journalism."

In 1976, the Australian media baron Rupert Murdoch bought the magazine in a hostile takeover, forcing Felker and Glaser out. A succession of editors followed, including Joe Armstrong and John Berendt.

1980s

In 1980, Murdoch hired Edward Kosner, who had worked at Newsweek. Murdoch also bought Cue, a listings magazine that had covered the city since 1932, and folded it into New York, simultaneously creating a useful going-out guide and eliminating a competitor.[8] Kosner's magazine tended toward a mix of newsmagazine-style stories, trend pieces, and pure "service" features—long articles on shopping and other consumer subjects—as well as close coverage of the glitzy 1980s New York City scene epitomized by financiers Donald Trump and Saul Steinberg. The magazine was profitable for most of the 1980s. The term "the Brat Pack" was coined for a 1985 story in the magazine.[9]

1990s

Murdoch got out of the magazine business in 1991, selling his holdings to K-III Communications, a partnership controlled by financier Henry Kravis. In January 1992, New York ran the first big magazine story on presidential candidate Bill Clinton, ten months before his election in November.

In 1993, budget pressure from K-III frustrated Kosner, and he left for Esquire magazine. After several months' search, during which the magazine was run by managing editor Peter Herbst, K-III hired Kurt Andersen, the co-creator of Spy, a humor monthly of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Andersen quickly replaced several staff members, bringing in many emerging and established writers (including Jim Cramer, Walter Kirn, Michael Tomasky, and Jacob Weisberg) and editors (including Michael Hirschorn, Kim France, Dany Levy, and Maer Roshan), and generally making the magazine faster-paced, younger in outlook, and more knowing in tone.

In August 1996, Bill Reilly fired Andersen from his editorship, citing the publication's financial results.[10] According to Andersen, he was fired for refusing to kill a story about a rivalry between investment bankers Felix Rohatyn and Steven Rattner that had upset Henry Kravis, a member of the firm's ownership group.[11] His replacement was Caroline Miller, who came from Seventeen, another K-III title.

2000s

In 2002 and 2003, Michael Wolff, the media critic hired by Miller in 1998, won two National Magazine Awards for his column. At the end of 2003, New York was sold again, to financier Bruce Wasserstein, for $55 million.[12]

Wasserstein replaced Miller with Adam Moss, known for editing the short-lived New York weekly of the late 1980s "7 Days" and the New York Times Magazine.[13]

In late 2004 the magazine was relaunched, most notably with two new sections: "The Strategist," devoted mostly to utility, and "The Culture Pages," covering the city's arts scene. Moss also rehired Kurt Andersen as a columnist. In early 2006, the company began an aggressive digital expansion with the relaunch of the magazine's website, previously nymetro.com, as nymag.com.

Since 2004, the magazine has won twenty four National Magazine Awards, more than any other magazine over this time period,[14] including Magazine of the Year in 2013, General Excellence in Print four times, and General Excellence Online three times. During this same period it has been a finalist an additional 48 times in categories that included Profile Writing, Reviews and Criticism, Commentary, Public Service, Magazine Section, Leisure Interests, Personal Service, Single-Topic Issue, Photography, Photojournalism, Photo Portfolio, and Design. In 2007, when the magazine for the first time dominated the awards, much of the coverage the next day noted that The New Yorker took home no awards that night, despite receiving nine nominations, and also noted that New York was the first magazine to win for both its print and Internet editions in the same year.

The February 25, 2008 issue featured a series of nude photographs of Lindsay Lohan. Shot by Bert Stern, the series replicated several poses from Stern's widely reproduced final photos of Marilyn Monroe, shot shortly before the actress's fatal drug overdose. That week, the magazine's website received over 60 million hits and with traffic 2000 percent higher than usual.

The magazine is especially known for its food writing (its restaurant critic Adam Platt won a James Beard Award in 2009, and its Underground Gourmet critics Rob Patronite and Robin Raisfeld have won two National Magazine Awards); and also for its political coverage, especially John Heilemann's reporting on the 2008 presidential election, which led to his (and Mark Halperin's) best-selling book Game Change, and for coverage of the first two years of the Obama administration; The New Republic praised its "hugely impressive political coverage" during this period.[15]

The magazine's current stable of writers includes national political columnist and correspondent John Heilemann, Steve Fishman, Jesse Green, Vanessa Grigoriadis, Joe Hagan, Mark Jacobson, Jennifer Senior, Gabriel Sherman, Christopher Smith, and Jonathan Van Meter. Its culture critics include David Edelstein (movies), Matt Zoller Seitz(TV), Jerry Saltz (art), Justin Davidson (classical music and architecture), and Kathryn Schulz(books), who won the National Book Critics Circle's Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing in 2012.

New York has been widely recognized for its design during this period, with back-to-back design wins at the National Magazine Awards and Magazine of the Year wins from the Society of Publication Designers (SPD) in 2006 and 2007. The 2008 Eliot Spitzer “Brain” cover was named Cover of the Year by the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME) and Advertising Age and 2009's “Bernie Madoff, Monster” was named Best News & Business Cover by ASME. New York won back-to-back ASME Cover of the Year awards in 2012 and 2013, for "Is She Just Too Old for This?" and "The City and the Storm" respectively. Design director Chris Dixon and photography director Jody Quon were named “Design Team of the Year” by Adweek in 2008.

In 2009, after Bruce Wasserstein's death, the magazine's ownership passed to his family. Many obituaries noted Wasserstein's revival of the magazine. "While previous owners had required constant features in the magazine about the best place to get a croissant or a beret," wrote David Carr of The New York Times, "it was clear that Wasserstein wanted a publication that was the best place to learn about the complicated apparatus that is modern New York. In enabling as much, Mr. Wasserstein recaptured the original intent of the magazine's founder, Clay Felker."[16]

2010s

On March 1, 2011. it was announced that Frank Rich would leave The New York Times to become an essayist and editor-at-large for New York. Rich began his relationship with the magazine starting in June 2011.[17]

New York‍ '​s "Encyclopedia of 9/11", published on the tenth anniversary of the attacks, was widely praised, with Gizmodo calling it "heartbreaking, locked in the past, and entirely current"; the issue won a National Magazine Award for Single-Topic Issue.[18]

New York‍ '​s offices in lower Manhattan were without electricity in the week following Hurricane Sandy, so the editorial staff published an issue from the midtown office of Wasserstein & Company, the firm that owns New York Media.[19] The issue's cover, shot by photographer Iwan Baan from a helicopter and showing Manhattan half in darkness, almost immediately became an iconic image of the storm,[20] and was named the magazine cover of the year by Time.[21] The photograph on the cover was published as a poster by the Museum of Modern Art, with proceeds benefiting Hurricane Sandy relief efforts.[22]

In 2013, New York magazine took the top honor at the National Magazine Awards again receiving magazine of the year for its print and digital coverage.[23]

In December 2013, the magazine announced plans to move to a biweekly format in March 2014, reducing from 42 annual issues to 29.[24]

Puzzles and competitions

New York magazine was once known for its competitions and unique crossword puzzles. For the first year of the magazine's existence, the composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim contributed an extremely complex cryptic crossword to every third issue. In the style of British crosswords (as they are sometimes called), the cryptic crosswords feature clues that include a straight definition and a wordplay definition. Richard Maltby, Jr. took over thereafter. Since 1980, the magazine has also run an American-style crossword. For the first 30 years the puzzle was always by Maura B. Jacobson, but beginning in the summer of 2010, Cathy Allis Millhauser's byline began appearing in alternate weeks, and the magazine announced her as permanent co-constructor in September 2010. The cryptic crosswords were eventually dropped.

In the remaining two weeks out of every three, Sondheim's friend Mary Ann Madden edited[25] an extremely popular witty literary competition calling for readers to send in humorous poetry or other bits of wordplay on a theme that changed with each installment. (A typical entry, in a competition calling for humorous epitaphs, supplied this one for Geronimo: "Requiescat in Apache.") Altogether, Madden ran 973 installments of the competition, retiring in 2000. Hundreds, sometimes thousands, of entries were received each week, and winners included the likes of David Mamet, Herb Sargent, and Dan Greenburg. David Halberstam once claimed that he had submitted entries 137 times without winning. Sondheim, Woody Allen, and Nora Ephron were fans.

The Competition's demise, when Madden retired, was greatly lamented among its fans. In August 2000, the magazine published a letter from an Irish contestant, John O'Byrne, who wrote: "How I'll miss the fractured definitions, awful puns, conversation stoppers, one-letter misprints, ludicrous proverbs, openings of bad novels, near misses, et al. (what a nice guy Al is!)." Many entrants have since migrated to The Washington Post‍ '​s similar "Style Invitational" feature. Three volumes of Competition winners were published, titled Thank You for the Giant Sea Tortoise, Son of Giant Sea Tortoise, and Maybe He's Dead: And Other Hilarious Results of New York Magazine Competitions.

Digital expansion and blogs

In 2006, New York's website, nymag.com, underwent a year-long relaunch, transforming the site from a magazine companion to an up-to-the-minute news and service destination. In 2008 parent company New York Media purchased the online restaurant and menu resource MenuPages, which serves eight markets across the U.S., as a complement to its own online restaurant listings and to gain a foothold in seven additional cities.[26] In 2011 MenuPages was sold to Seamless.[27] As of July 2010, digital revenue accounted for fully one third of company advertising revenue.[28]

New York magazine has a variety of online destinations including The Cut, Daily Intelligencer, Grub Street, and Vulture.

"The Cut", New York‍ '​s digital fashion destination, was expanded and relaunched in 2012.

Grub Street, covering food and restaurants, was expanded in 2009 to five additional cities served by former nymag.com sister site MenuPages.com.[29] In 2013 it was announced that Grub Street would close its city blogs outside New York, and bring a more national focus to GrubStreet.com.[30]

David Carr noted in an August 2010 column, “In a way, New York magazine is fast becoming a digital enterprise with a magazine attached.”[31]

Books

In the 2000s New York published four books: New York Look Book: A Gallery of Street Fashion (New York: Melcher Media, 2007),[32] New York Stories: Landmark Writing From Four Decades of New York Magazine,[33] My First New York: Early Adventures in the Big City (As Remembered by Actors, Artists, Athletes, Chefs, Comedians, Filmmakers, Mayors, Models, Moguls, Porn Stars, Rockers, Writers, and Others) (New York: Ecco/HarperCollins, 2010),[34] and In Season: More Than 150 Fresh and Simple Recipes from New York Magazine Inspired by Farmers' Market Ingredients (New York: Blue Rider Press, 2012).[35]

Television

Michael Hirschorn's Ish Entertainment developed a TV pilot for Bravo inspired by the magazine's popular weekly Approval Matrix feature, which has appeared in the magazine since November 2004.[36]

New York‍ '​s art critic Jerry Saltz is a judge on Bravo's fine art reality competition series Work of Art: The Next Great Artist.[37] Additionally, Grub Street Senior Editor Alan Sytsma appeared as a guest on judge on three episodes of the third season of Top Chef: Masters (season 3).

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Consumer Magazines". Alliance for Audited Media. Retrieved February 10, 2014.
  2. ↑ Wolfe, Tom. (1972-02-14) Tom Wolfe Gives an Eyewitness Report of the Birth of 'The New Journalism' - New York Magazine. Nymag.com. Retrieved on 2013-10-23.
  3. ↑ Kurtz, Howard (December 7, 2009). "Bright lights, bigger city at New York Magazine". The Washington Post.
  4. ↑ Haughney, Christine (May 2, 2013). "New York Receives National Magazine Awards' Top Prize". The New York Times.
  5. ↑ Bhuiyan, Johana. (2013-05-31) 'New York' mag hires new online deputy, as traffic grows. Capital New York. Retrieved on 2013-10-23.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Mclellan, Dennis (July 2, 2008). "Clay Felker, 82; editor of New York magazine led New Journalism charge". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved November 23, 2008.
  7. ↑ French, Alex. "The Very First Issues of 19 Famous Magazines". Mental Floss. Retrieved 12 August 2013.
  8. ↑ GLANKOFF, PETER (April 15, 1995). "Cue Magazine Paved Way for Arts Guides". The New York Times.
  9. ↑ Blum, David, "Hollywood's Brat Pack", June 10, 1985, pp. 40–47.
  10. ↑ Weber, Bruce (October 20, 2008). "Bill Reilly, Magazine Publishing Executive, Dies at 70". The New York Times. Retrieved October 23, 2008.
  11. ↑ Pogrebin, Robin (September 29, 1996). "When a Magazine Is Too Brash for the Bottom Line". The New York Times. Retrieved October 23, 2008.
  12. ↑ Carr, David; Sorkin, Andrew Ross (December 18, 2003). "Why Did He Buy New York? Hey, Wasserstein Loves Deals". The New York Times.
  13. ↑ Seelye, Katharine Q. (April 4, 2005). "Energy and Acclaim, but No Profit Yet at New York Magazine". The New York Times.
  14. ↑ Flamm, Matthew. (2012-09-24) New York Magazine Cashing in Online | Media - Advertising Age. Adage.com. Retrieved on 2013-10-23.
  15. ↑ "Understanding McCain | The New Republic". Tnr.com. Retrieved October 15, 2010.
  16. ↑ Carr, David (October 15, 2009). "Wasserstein's New York Magazine: A Deal Where Everyone Made Out". The New York Times.
  17. ↑ "Frank Rich Joins New York Magazine". New York Magazine. March 1, 2011. Retrieved March 1, 2011.
  18. ↑ http://www.wwd.com/media-news/fashion-memopad/asmes-big-night-5891884
  19. ↑
  20. ↑
  21. ↑
  22. ↑
  23. ↑ Haughney, Christine (May 2, 2013). "New York Receives National Magazine Awards' Top Prize". The New York Times.
  24. ↑ http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/12/new-york-magazine-will-publish-biweekly-in-2014.html
  25. ↑ Cat People, Bill Hayward, introduction by Rogers E. M. Whitaker. New York: Dolphin/Doubleday, 1978 (p. 52)
  26. ↑ Pérez-Peña, Richard (July 12, 2008). "New York Magazine Buys MenuPages Site". The New York Times.
  27. ↑ Brustein, Joshua (September 26, 2011). "Seamless Acquires Menupages in Race for Restaurants". The New York Times.
  28. ↑ New York's NYmag.com Is Ad Age's Magazine A-List Website of the Year, an October 2009 Ad Age article
  29. ↑ Chou, Kimberly (July 9, 2009). "Grub Street Goes National in Online Food Fight". The Wall Street Journal.
  30. ↑ Grub Street Shutting Down Non-NYC Sites [Updated] - Food Media - Eater National. Eater.com (2013-05-21). Retrieved on 2013-10-23.
  31. ↑ Carr, David (August 8, 2010). "New York Magazine's Lessons for Harman and Newsweek". The New York Times.
  32. ↑ "Melcher Media | New York Look Book". Melcher.com. Retrieved October 15, 2010.
  33. ↑ Fishman, Steve; Homans, John; Moss, Adam, eds. (2008). New York Stories: Landmark Writing From Four Decades of New York Magazine. New York: Random House. ISBN 978-0-8129-7992-3.
  34. ↑ "Ecco". Harpercollinscatalogs.com. April 29, 2009. Retrieved October 15, 2010.
  35. ↑ "In Season by Rob Patronite and Robin Raisfeld". Penguin Books. Retrieved May 4, 2014.
  36. ↑ He Loves the Approval Matrix: Hirschorn Brings New York Mag Feature to Bravo, an April 6, 2010 article from The New York Observer
  37. ↑ Ken Tucker (June 9, 2010). "Work of Art: The Next Great Artist | TV". EW.com. Retrieved October 15, 2010.

External links