The New York Times Magazine

The New York Times Magazine

The magazine's June 8, 2008, cover.
Editor	Hugo Lindgren
Categories	Newspaper supplement
Frequency	Weekly
Circulation	1,623,697 per week[1] (as part of Sunday paper)
Publisher	Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr.
First issue	September 6, 1896
Company	The New York Times
Country	United States
Language	English
Website	www.nytimes.com/magazine
ISSN	0028-7822

The New York Times Magazine is a Sunday magazine supplement included with the Sunday edition of The New York Times. It is host to feature articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted many notable contributors. The magazine is also noted for its photography, especially relating to fashion and style.

History

Its first issue was published on September 6, 1896, and contained the first photographs ever printed in the newspaper.^[2] In the early decades it was a section of the broadsheet paper and not an insert as it is today. The creation of a "serious" Sunday magazine was part of a massive overhaul to the newspaper instigated that year by its new owner, Adolph Ochs, who also banned fiction, comic strips and gossip columns from the paper, and is generally credited with saving The New York Times from financial ruin.^[3] In 1897, the magazine published a 16-page spread of photographs documenting Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, a "costly feat" that resulted in a wildly popular issue and helped boost the magazine to success.^[4]

In its early years, The New York Times Magazine began a tradition of publishing the writing of well-known contributors, from W. E. B. Du Bois and Albert Einstein to numerous sitting and future U.S. Presidents.^[4] Editor Lester Markel, an "intense and autocratic" journalist who oversaw the Sunday Times from the 1920s through the 1950s, encouraged the idea of the magazine as a forum for ideas.^[4] During his tenure, writers such as Leo Tolstoy, Thomas Mann, Gertrude Stein, and Tennessee Williams contributed pieces to the magazine. When, in 1970, The New York Times introduced its first Op-Ed page, the magazine shifted away from publishing as many editorial pieces.^[4]

In 1979, the magazine began publishing Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist William Safire's "On Language," a column discussing issues of English grammar, use and etymology. Safire's column steadily gained popularity and by 1990 was generating "more mail than anything else" in the magazine.^[5] 1999 saw the debut of "The Ethicist," an advice column written by humorist Randy Cohen that quickly became a highly contentious part of the magazine. The column ended on February 27, 2011.^[6][7] "Consumed", Rob Walker's regular column on consumer culture, debuted in 2004. The Sunday Magazine also features a puzzle page, edited by Will Shortz, that features a crossword puzzle with a larger grid than those featured in the Times during the week, along with other types of puzzles on a rotating basis (including diagramless crossword puzzles and anacrostics.)

In September, 2010, as part of a greater effort to reinvigorate the magazine, Times editor Bill Keller hired former staff member and then-editor of Bloomberg Businessweek, Hugo Lindgren, as the editor of The New York Times Magazine.^[8] As part of a series of new staff hires upon assuming his new role, Lindgren first hired then-executive editor of O: The Oprah Magazine Lauren Kern to be his deputy editor ^[9] and then hired then-editor of TNR.com, The New Republic magazine's website, Greg Veis to edit the "front of the book" section of the magazine.^[10] In December, 2010, Lindgren hired Joel Lovell, formerly story editor at GQ magazine, as deputy editor. ^[11]

Supplements

In 2004, The New York Times Magazine began publishing an entire supplement devoted to style. Titled T, the supplement is edited by Sally Singer and appears 14 times a year.

In 2006, the magazine introduced two other supplements: PLAY, a sports magazine published every other month, and KEY, a real estate magazine published twice a year.^[12]

The Funny Pages

In the September 18, 2005, issue of the magazine, an editors' note announced the addition of The Funny Pages, a literary section of the magazine intended to "engage our readers in some ways we haven't yet tried — and to acknowledge that it takes many different types of writing to tell the story of our time."^[13] The Funny Pages is made up of three parts: the Strip (a multipart graphic novel that spans weeks), the Sunday Serial (a genre fiction serial novel that also spans weeks), and True-Life Tales (a humorous personal essay, by a different author each week.) On July 8, 2007, the magazine stopped printing True-Life Tales.

The section has been criticized for being unfunny, sometimes nonsensical, and excessively highbrow; in a 2006 poll conducted by Gawker.com asking, "Do you now find — or have you ever found — The Funny Pages funny?", 92% of 1824 voters answered "No."^[14]

The Funny Pages are no longer published in the magazine.

Strips

Title	Artist	Start Date	End Date	# of Chapters
Building Stories	Chris Ware	September 18, 2005	April 16, 2006	30
La Maggie La Loca	Jaime Hernandez	April 23, 2006	September 3, 2006	20
George Sprott (1894-1975)	Seth	September 17, 2006	March 25, 2007	25
Watergate Sue	Megan Kelso	April 1, 2007	September 9, 2007	24
Mister Wonderful	Daniel Clowes	September 16, 2007	February 10, 2008	20
Low Moon	Jason	February 17, 2008	June 22, 2008	17
The Murder of the Terminal Patient	Rutu Modan	June 29, 2008	November 2, 2008	17
Prime Baby	Gene Yang	November 9, 2008	April 5, 2009	18

Sunday Serials

Title	Author	Start Date	End Date	# of Chapters
Comfort to the Enemy	Elmore Leonard	September 18, 2005	December 18, 2005	14
At Risk	Patricia Cornwell	January 8, 2006	April 16, 2006	15
Limitations	Scott Turow	April 23, 2006	August 6, 2006	16
The Overlook	Michael Connelly	September 17, 2006	January 21, 2007	16
Gentlemen of the Road	Michael Chabon	January 28, 2007	May 6, 2007	15
Doors Open	Ian Rankin	May 13, 2007	August 19, 2007	15
The Dead and the Naked	Cathleen Schine	September 9, 2007	January 6, 2008	16
The Lemur	John Banville (as Benjamin Black)	January 13, 2008	April 27, 2008	15
Mrs. Corbett's Request	Colin Harrison	May 4, 2008	August 17, 2008	15
The Girl in the Green Raincoat	Laura Lippman	September 7, 2008		1 (to date)

Of the serial novels, At Risk, Limitations, The Overlook, Gentlemen of the Road, and The Lemur have since been published in book form with added material.

References

1. ^ The New York Times Company (2006-09-30). "Investors: Circulation Data". http://www.nytco.com/investors-nyt-circulation.html. Retrieved 2007-03-07. 
2. ^ The New York Times Company. New York Times Timeline 1881-1910. Retrieved on 2009-03-13.
3. ^ "The Kingdom and the Cabbage", Time, 1977-08-15. Retrieved on 2007-05-07.
4. ^ ^{a b c d} Rosenthal, Jack (1996-04-14). "5000 Sundays: Letter From the Editor". The New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=980DE6DD1139F937A25757C0A960958260. Retrieved 2007-05-24. 
5. ^ "Language Maven Strikes Again", Entertainment Weekly, 1990-08-10. Retrieved on 2007-05-22.
6. ^ "Letter to the Reader", The New York Times, 1999-02-21. Retrieved on 2007-05-22.
7. ^ Gordon, Doug. "Interview: Randy Cohen, The Ethicist", Gothamist.com, 2004-10-08. Retrieved on 2007-05-22.
8. ^ Peters, Jeremy (2010-09-30). "Hugo Lindgren Named Editor of The Times Magazine". The New York Times. http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/30/hugo-lindgren-named-editor-of-the-times-magazine/?pagemode=print. Retrieved 2010-10-23. 
9. ^ Peters, Jeremy (2010-10-11). "Times Names Deputy Magazine Editor". The New York Times. http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/11/times-names-deputy-magazine-editor/?pagemode=print. Retrieved 2010-10-23. 
10. ^ "TNR’s Greg Veis to The New York Times Magazine". New York Magazine. 2010-10-22. http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2010/10/tnrs_greg_veis_to_the_new_york.html. Retrieved 2010-10-23. 
11. ^ Summers, Nick. "Inside the Media Hiring Bubble" "The New York Observer", January 4, 2011
12. ^ The New York Times Company (2006). "Media Kit 2007: Magazine Highlights". Archived from the original on 2007-05-03. http://web.archive.org/web/20070503075148/http://www.nytimes.whsites.net/mediakit/pages/m_ed_highlight.html. Retrieved 2007-05-24. 
13. ^ "From the Editors; The Funny Pages", The New York Times, 2005-09-18. Retrieved on 2007-05-05.
14. ^ "Is the 'Times Magazine' Funny?". Gawker.com. 2006-02-13. http://gawker.com/news/new-york-times-magazine/is-the-times-magazine-funny-154425.php. Retrieved 2007-05-07. 

External links

• Official website