Splitsider

''New York'' is an American biweekly 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. 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, John Heilemann, Frank Rich, and Rebecca Traister.

In its 21st-century 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 increasingly published political and cultural stories of national significance.

Since its redesign and relaunch in 2004, the magazine has won more National Magazine Awards than any other publication, including the 2013 award for Magazine of the Year. It was 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'', the ''Cut,'' and ''Grub Street''—received visits from more than 14 million users per month.

In 2018, New York Media, the parent company of ''New York'' magazine, instituted a paywall for all its online sites, followed by layoffs in early 2019. On September 24, 2019, Vox Media announced that it had purchased ''New York'' magazine and its parent company, New York Media.

History

1960s

''New York'' began life in 1963 as the Sunday-magazine supplement of the ''New York Herald Tribune'' newspaper. Edited first by Sheldon Zalaznick and then by Clay Felker, the magazine showcased the work of several talented Tribune contributors, including Tom Wolfe, Barbara Goldsmith, and Jimmy Breslin. 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 Wall Street bankers led by Armand G. Erpf (who became the magazine's first chairman and who Felker attributed as the financial architect of the magazine) and 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 "You and Your Big Mouth: How the Honks and Wonks Reveal the Phonetic Truth about Status" in the inaugural issue), 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. The office for the magazine was on the top floor of the old Tammany Hall clubhouse at 207 East 32nd Street, which Glaser owned.

1970s

Wolfe, a regular contributor to the magazine, wrote a story in 1970 that captured the spirit of 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'', after a lot of convincing by Gloria Steinem, also launched ''Ms.'' magazine, which began as a special issue. ''New West'', a sister magazine on ''New York'' model that covered California life, was also published for a few years in the 1970s.

As the 1970s progressed, Felker continued to broaden the magazine's editorial vision beyond Manhattan, 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 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 founded by Mort Glankoff that had covered the city since 1932, and folded it into ''New York'', simultaneously creating a useful going-out guide and eliminating a competitor. 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.

1990s

Murdoch got out of the magazine business in 1991 by selling his holdings to K-III Communications, a partnership controlled by financier Henry Kravis