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''New York'' is an American biweekly magazine concerned with life, culture, politics, and style generally, with a particular emphasis on New York City.

Founded by Clay Felker and Milton Glaser in 1968 as a competitor to ''The New Yorker'' and ''The New York Times Magazine'', it was brasher in voice and more connected to contemporary city life and commerce, and became a cradle of New Journalism. Over time, it became more national in scope, publishing many noteworthy articles about American culture by writers such as Tom Wolfe, Jimmy Breslin, Nora Ephron, Pete Hamill, Jacob Weisberg, Michael Wolff, John Heilemann, Frank Rich, and Rebecca Traister. It was among the first "lifestyle magazines" meant to appeal to both male and female audiences, and its format and style have been emulated by many American regional and city publications.

''New York'' in its earliest days focused almost entirely on coverage of its namesake city, but beginning in the 1970s, it expanded into reporting and commentary on national politics, notably Richard Reeves on Watergate, Joe Klein's early cover story about Bill Clinton, John Heilemann's reporting on the 2008 presidential election that led to his (and Mark Halperin's) best-selling book ''Game Change'', Jonathan Chait's commentary, and Olivia Nuzzi's reporting on the first Trump administration. ''The New Republic'' praised its "hugely impressive political coverage" during the presidency of Barack Obama. It is also known for its arts and culture criticism, 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 won two National Magazine Awards), and its service journalism (its "Strategist" department won seven National Magazine Awards in eleven years.

Since its sale, redesign, and relaunch in 2004, the magazine has won several National Magazine Awards, including the award for general excellence in 2006, 2007, 2010, 2011, 2014, and 2016, as well as the 2013 award for Magazine of the Year. Since the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism opened to magazines as well as newspapers in 2016, ''New York''s critics have won twice (Jerry Saltz in 2018, and Andrea Long Chu in 2023) and been finalists twice more ( Justin Davidson in 2020 and Craig Jenkins in 2021). In 2009, the ''Washington Post'' media critic Howard Kurtz wrote that "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," observing that it was more regularly publishing political and cultural stories of national and international import.

The magazine's first website, nymetro.com, was launched in 2001. In the early 21st century, the magazine began to diversify that online presence, introducing subject-specific websites under the nymag.com umbrella: ''Vulture'', '' The Cut'', ''Intelligencer, The Strategist, Curbed'', and ''Grub Street''. In 2018, New York Media, the parent company of ''New York'' magazine, launched a digital subscription product for those sites. 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'' was created in 1963 as the Sunday-magazine supplement of the ''New York Herald Tribune'' newspaper. The ''Herald Tribune'', then in financial difficulty, had recently been sold to John Hay Whitney, and was looking to revitalize its business with an increased focus on editorial excellence, which included a relaunch of the Sunday edition and its magazine. Edited first by Sheldon Zalaznick and then by Clay Felker, the relaunched magazine, called ''New York'', showcased the work of many talented ''Tribune'' contributors, including Tom Wolfe, Barbara Goldsmith, Gail Sheehy, Dick Schaap, and Jimmy Breslin. The ''Tribune'' went out of business in 1966, and ''New York'' was briefly revived as part of a combined paper, the ''World Journal Tribune'', that lasted until May 1967. Shortly after the ''WJT'' closed, Felker and his partner, Milton Glaser, purchased the rights to the nameplate, backed by Wall Street bankers led by Armand G. Erpf (the magazine's first chairman, 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 weekly. 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. Several writers came 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 under the pseudonym "Adam Smith." Glaser and his deputy Walter Bernard designed and laid out the magazine and hired many notable artists, including Jim McMullan, Robert Grossman, and David Levine, to produce covers and illustrations.

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 Nicholas Pileggi, Gail Sheehy, and Gloria Steinem, who wrote a politics column. Judith Crist wrote movie reviews. Harold Clurman was hired as the theater critic, then replaced a few months later by John Simon, who became notorious for his harsh reviews. Alan Rich covered the classical-music scene. Barbara Goldsmith wrote a series called "The Creative Environment", in which she interviewed such subjects as Marcel Breuer, I. M. Pei, George Balanchine, and Pablo Picasso about their process. Gael Greene, writing under the rubric "The Insatiable Critic", reviewed restaurants, cultivating a baroque writing style that leaned heavily on sexual metaphor. The office for the magazine was on the top floor of the old Tammany Hall clubhouse at 207 East 32nd Street, which Glaser owned. The magazine did not consistently turn a profit in these early years: One board member, Alan Patricof, later said that "it may have touched into the black for a quarter, then out of it, but it was not significantly profitable."

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 controversial and often criticized 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 and expressed Wolfe's interest in status and class.

In 1972, ''New York''s year-end issue incorporated a 30-page preview of the first issue of ''Ms.'' magazine, edited by Gloria Steinem. Gail Sheehy's "The Search for Grey Gardens", a cover story about the notorious mother-and-daughter Beale household of East Hampton, led to the Maysles brothers' acclaimed documentary.

As the 1970s progressed, Felker continued to broaden the magazine's editorial vision beyond Manhattan, covering Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal closely. He also launched ''New West'', a sister magazine on ''New York'''s model that covered California life, published in separate Northern California and Southern California editions. In 1976, journalist Nik Cohn wrote 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, in a followup story in ''New York'', Cohn admitted that he had made up the character and most of the story.

In 1976, the Australian media baron Rupert Murdoch bought the magazine in a hostile takeover, forcing Felker and Glaser out. A succession of top editors followed through the remainder of the decade, including James Brady, Joe Armstrong (who also served as publisher), John Berendt, and (briefly) Jane Amsterdam.

1980s

In 1980, Murdoch hired Edward Kosner, the former editor of ''Newsweek'', to replace Armstrong. 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 shifted the mix of the magazine toward newsmagazine-style cover 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 cover 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