The New Yorker

The New Yorker is an American magazine that publishes criticism, essays, investigative reporting, and fiction. Formerly weekly, the magazine is now published 46 times a year.

Related Topics:
American - Magazine

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Although ostensibly it focuses on the cultural life of New York City, The New Yorker has a wide audience outside of New York due to the quality of its journalism. Its cosmopolitan, urbane character is accentuated by its "Talk of the Town" section, which offers breezy commentaries on New York life, popular culture, and eccentric Americana, and the dry wit of its short humorous sketches and famous cartoons. In the mid-20th century, it popularized the short story as a literary form in the United States. Within the journalism profession, The New Yorker enjoys the reputation of having the finest fact-checking and copyediting teams in the publishing industry.

Related Topics:
New York City - Cartoon - 20th century - Short story - United States

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The New Yorker debuted on February 21, 1925. It was founded by Harold Ross, who wanted to create a sophisticated humor magazine—in contrast to the corniness of other humor publications such as Judge, which he had worked for, or Life. Ross partnered with entrepreneur Raoul Fleishmann to establish the F-R Publishing Company and established the magazine's first offices at 25 West Forty-fifth Street in Manhattan. Ross would continue to edit the magazine until his death in 1951. For the first, occasionally precarious, years of its existence, the magazine prided itself on its cosmopolitan sophistication and on its being "the magazine which is not edited for the old lady in Dubuque."

Related Topics:
February 21 - 1925 - Harold Ross - ''Life'' - Dubuque

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The magazine's first cover, of a dandy peering at a butterfly through a monocle, was drawn by Rea Irvin, who also designed the font the magazine uses for its nameplate and headlines. The gentleman on the original cover is often mistakenly referred to as "Eustace Tilley," a character created for "The New Yorker" by Corey Ford. Eustace Tilley was the hero of a series entitled "The Making of a Magazine," which began on the inside front cover of the issue of August 8, that first summer. He was a younger man than the figure of the original cover. His top hat was of a newer style, without the curved brim. He wore a morning coat and striped trousers. Ford borrowed Eustace Tilley's last name from an aunt--he had always found it vaguely humorous. "Eustace" was selected for euphony. Tilley was always busy, and, in the illustrations by Johann Bull, always poised. He might be in Mexico, supervising the vast farms which grew the cactus for binding the magazine's pages together. The Punctuation Farm, where commas were grown in profusion, because Ross had developed a love of them, was naturally in a more fertile region. Tilley might be inspecting the Initial Department, where letters were sent to be capitalized. Or he might be superintending the Emphasis Department, where letters were placed in a vise and forced sideways, for the creation of italics. He would jump to the Sargasso Sea, where by insulting squids he got ink for the printing presses, which were powered by a horse turning a pole. It was told how in the great paper shortage of 1882 he had saved the magazine by getting society matrons to contribute their finery. Thereafter dresses were made at a special factory and girls employed to wear them out, after which the cloth was used for manufacturing paper. Raoul Fleischmann, who had moved into the offices to protect his venture with Ross, gathered the Tilley series into a promotion booklet. Later Ross took a listing for Eustace Tilley in the Manhattan telephone directory.

Related Topics:
Butterfly - Monocle - Rea Irvin

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While the magazine never lost its touches of humor, The New Yorker soon established itself as a preeminent forum for "serious" journalism and fiction. Shortly after the end of World War II, John Hersey's essay Hiroshima filled an entire issue. In subsequent decades the publication published short stories by many of the most respected writers of the 20th and 21st centuries, including Ann Beattie, J.D. Salinger, Haruki Murakami, Alice Munro, Vladimir Nabokov, Philip Roth, and John Updike. Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" received more mail after publication than any other story in the New Yorkers history. In its early decades, the magazine sometimes published two or even three short stories a week, but in recent years the pace has remained steady at one story per issue. While some styles and themes recur more often than others in New Yorker fiction, the magazine's stories are marked less by uniformity than by their variety, and they have ranged from Updike's introspective domestic narratives to the surrealism of Donald Barthelme and from parochial accounts of the lives of neurotic New Yorkers to stories set in a wide range of locations and eras and translated from many languages.

Related Topics:
World War II - John Hersey - Hiroshima - Ann Beattie - J.D. Salinger - Haruki Murakami - Alice Munro - Vladimir Nabokov - Philip Roth - John Updike - Shirley Jackson - The Lottery - Donald Barthelme

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The New Yorker's cartoons have a reputation for being slightly bourgeois, surreal and often inscrutable. One popular stereotype is that the cartoons have punchlines so non sequitur that they are impossible to understand. (This stereotype once inspired an episode of the sitcom Seinfeld.) However, the cartoons remain quite popular, implying that there is a substantial constituency of readers who enjoy them and find them funny. In addition, certain contemporary New Yorker cartoonists such as Roz Chast break this mold, using humor that almost any reader would find accessible.

Related Topics:
Bourgeois - Surreal - Non sequitur - Sitcom - Seinfeld - Roz Chast

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Traditionally, the magazine's politics have been essentially liberal and non-partisan. However, in recent years, the editorial staff has been taking a somewhat more partisan stance. Coverage of the 2004 U.S. presidential campaign, led by correspondent Philip Gourevitch, strongly favored Democratic candidate John Kerry. In its November 1, 2004 issue, the magazine broke with 80 years of precedent and issued a formal endorsement of Kerry in an unsigned lead editorial.

Related Topics:
Liberal - Democratic - John Kerry

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The non-fiction feature articles (which usually make up the bulk of the magazine's content) are known for covering an eclectic array of topics. Recent subjects have included eccentric evangelist Creflo Dollar, the different ways in which humans perceive the passage of time, and Munchausen syndrome by proxy. After the September 11, 2001 attacks, famed cartoonist and New Yorker cover artist, Art Spiegelman (who is married to the current Art Editor of the magazine), resigned in protest of what he saw as the magazine's self-censorship in its political coverage. The magazine later hired investigative journalist Seymour Hersh to report on military and security issues, and he has produced a number widely-reported articles on the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the subsequent occupation by US forces. His revelations in the pages of The New Yorker about abuses in the Abu Ghraib prison and The Pentagon contingency plans for invading Iran were reported around the world.

Related Topics:
Creflo Dollar - Time - Munchausen syndrome by proxy - September 11, 2001 attacks - Art Spiegelman - Seymour Hersh - 2003 invasion of Iraq - Abu Ghraib prison - The Pentagon - Iran

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One unusual feature of the magazine's in-house style is the placement of diaeresis marks in words with repeating vowels—such as reëlected and coöperate—in which the two vowel letters indicate different vowel sounds. The magazine does not put titles of plays or books in italics, but simply sets them off with quotation marks. Formerly, when a word or phrase in quotation marks came at the end of a phrase or clause that ended with a semicolon, the semicolon would be put before the trailing quotation mark; now, however, the magazine follows the usual American punctuation style and puts the semicolon after the second quotation mark.

Related Topics:
Style - Diaeresis - Vowel - Quotation marks - Semicolon - Punctuation

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The current editor of The New Yorker is David Remnick. Previous editors, in addition to Ross, have been William Shawn (1951-1987), Robert Gottlieb (1987-1992) and Tina Brown (1992-1998). It was acquired by Advance Publications in 1985, the media company owned by S.I. Newhouse.

Related Topics:
David Remnick - William Shawn - Robert Gottlieb - Tina Brown - Advance Publications - 1985 - S.I. Newhouse

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A New Yorker look-alike called Novy Ochevidets (The New Eyewitness) was launched in Russia in 2004. It folded in January 2005 after five months of circulation.

Related Topics:
Russia - 2004

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