The New Yorker
Encyclopedia
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast
. Starting as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is now published 47 times annually, with five of these issues covering two-week spans.
Although its reviews and events listings often focus on the cultural life of New York City
, The New Yorker has a wide audience outside of New York. It is well known for its illustrated and often topical covers, its commentaries on popular culture
and eccentric Americana
; its attention to modern fiction
by the inclusion of short stories
and literary reviews; its rigorous fact checking
and copyediting; its journalism
on politics and social issues
; and its single-panel cartoons sprinkled throughout each issue.
and his wife, Jane Grant
, a New York Times
reporter. Ross wanted to create a sophisticated humor magazine different from corny humor publications such as Judge, where he had worked, or Life
. Ross partnered with entrepreneur Raoul H. Fleischmann to establish the F-R Publishing Company and established the magazine's first offices at 25 West 45th Street in Manhattan
. Ross edited the magazine until his death in 1951. During the early, occasionally precarious years of its existence, the magazine prided itself on its cosmopolitan sophistication. Harold Ross famously declared in a 1925 prospectus for the magazine: "It has announced that it is not edited for the old lady in Dubuque
."
Although the magazine never lost its touches of humor, it soon established itself as a pre-eminent forum for serious fiction
literature
and journalism. Shortly after the end of World War II, John Hersey
's essay Hiroshima filled an entire issue. In subsequent decades the magazine published short stories by many of the most respected writers of the 20th and 21st centuries, including Ann Beattie
, John Cheever
, Roald Dahl
, Alice Munro
, Haruki Murakami
, Vladimir Nabokov
, John O'Hara
, Philip Roth
, J.D. Salinger
, Irwin Shaw
, John Updike
, Eudora Welty
, and E. B. White
. Publication of Shirley Jackson
's "The Lottery
" drew more mail 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 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. Writers like Kurt Vonnegut
said that The New Yorker has been an effective institution for getting a large audience through the learning process required for appreciating modern literature.
The non-fiction feature articles (which usually make up the bulk of the magazine's content) cover 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
.
The magazine is notable for its editorial traditions. Under the rubric Profiles, it has long published articles about a range of notable people, from Ernest Hemingway
, Henry R. Luce
and Marlon Brando
to Hollywood restaurateur Michael Romanoff
, magician Ricky Jay
and mathematicians David and Gregory Chudnovsky
. Other enduring features have been "Goings on About Town," a listing of cultural and entertainment events in New York, and "The Talk of the Town," a miscellany of brief pieces—frequently humorous, whimsical or eccentric vignettes of life in New York—written in a breezily light style, or feuilleton
, although in recent years the section often begins with a serious commentary. For many years, newspaper snippets containing amusing errors, unintended meanings or badly mixed metaphors ("Block That Metaphor") have been used as filler items, accompanied by a witty retort. There is no masthead listing the editors and staff. And despite some changes, the magazine has kept much of its traditional appearance over the decades in typography, layout, covers and artwork. The magazine was acquired by Advance Publications
, the media company owned by S.I. Newhouse
, in 1985.
Ross was succeeded by William Shawn
(1951–1987), followed by Robert Gottlieb
(1987–1992) and Tina Brown
(1992–1998). Brown's nearly six-year tenure attracted the most controversy, thanks to her high profile (a marked contrast to that of the retiring Shawn) and the changes she made to a magazine that had retained a similar look and feel for the previous half century. She introduced color to the editorial pages (several years before The New York Times
also did so) and photography, with less type on each page and a generally more modern layout. More substantively, she increased the coverage of current events and hot topics such as celebrities and business tycoons and placed short pieces throughout "Goings on About Town", including a racy column about nightlife in Manhattan. A new letters-to-the-editor page and the addition of authors’ bylines to their "Talk of the Town" pieces had the effect of making the magazine more personal. The current editor of The New Yorker is David Remnick
, who took over in 1998 from Brown.
Wrote Tom Wolfe
about the magazine's style: "The New Yorker style was one of leisurely meandering understatement, droll when in the humorous mode, tautological and litotical when in the serious mode, constantly amplified, qualified, adumbrated upon, nuanced and renuanced, until the magazine’s pale-gray pages became High Baroque triumphs of the relative clause and appository modifier."
As far back as the 1940s the magazine's commitment to fact-checking
was already well known. Yet the magazine played a role in a literary scandal and defamation lawsuit over two articles by Janet Malcolm
about Sigmund Freud
's legacy, that appeared in the 1990s. Questions were raised about the magazine's fact-checking process. As of 2010, The New Yorker employs 16 fact checkers.
Since the late 1990s, The New Yorker has used the Internet to publish current and archived material. It maintains a website with some content from the current issue (plus exclusive web-only content). Subscribers have access to the full current issue online, as well as a complete archive of back issues viewable as they were originally printed. In addition, The New Yorkers cartoons are available for purchase online. A digital archive of back issues from 1925 to April 2008 (representing more than 4,000 issues and half a million pages) has also been issued on DVD-ROMs and on a small portable hard drive. More recently, an iPad version of the current issue of the magazine has been released.
A New Yorker look-alike, Novy Ochevidets (The New Eyewitness), was launched in Russia in 2004. It folded in January 2005 after five months of circulation.
In its November 1, 2004 issue, the magazine for the first time endorsed a presidential candidate, choosing to endorse John Kerry
over George W. Bush
. They continued this in 2008, endorsing Barack Obama
over John McCain
.
s) since it began publication in 1925. The cartoon editor of The New Yorker for years was Lee Lorenz
, who first began cartooning in 1956 and became a New Yorker contract contributor in 1958. After serving as the magazine's art editor from 1973 to 1993 (when he was replaced by Françoise Mouly
), he continued in the position of cartoon editor until 1998. His book, The Art of the New Yorker: 1925–1995 (Knopf, 1995), was the first comprehensive survey of all aspects of the magazine's graphics. In 1998, Robert Mankoff
took over as cartoon editor, and since then Mankoff has edited at least 14 collections of New Yorker cartoons.
The New Yorkers stable of cartoonists has included many important talents in American humor, including Charles Addams
, Peter Arno
, Charles Barsotti
, George Booth, Roz Chast
, Tom Cheney
, Sam Cobean
, Leo Cullum
, Richard Decker
Helen E. Hokinson, Ed Koren
, Mary Petty
, George Price
, Charles Saxon
, David Snell
, Otto Soglow
, Saul Steinberg
, William Steig
, Richard Taylor, James Thurber
, Barney Tobey and Gahan Wilson
.
Many early New Yorker cartoonists did not caption their own cartoons. In his book The Years with Ross, Thurber describes the newspaper's weekly art meeting, where cartoons submitted over the previous week would be brought up from the mail room to be gone over by Ross, the editorial department and a number of staff writers. Cartoons would often be rejected or sent back to artists with requested amendments, while others would be accepted and captions written for them. Some artists hired their own writers; Helen Hokinson hired James Reid Parker in 1931. (Brendan Gill
relates in his book Here at The New Yorker that at one point in the early 1940s, the quality of the artwork submitted to the magazine seemed to improve. It was later found out that the office boy (a teenaged Truman Capote
) had been acting as a volunteer art editor, dropping pieces he didn't like down the far edge of his desk.)
Several of the magazine's cartoons have climbed to a higher plateau of fame. One 1928 cartoon drawn by Carl Rose
and captioned by E. B. White
shows a mother telling her daughter, "It's broccoli, dear." The daughter responds, "I say it's spinach and I say the hell with it." Three years later, the Broadway musical Face the Music featured a musical number named "I Say It's Spinach". The catchphrase "back to the drawing board" originated with the 1941 Peter Arno cartoon showing an engineer walking away from a crashed plane, saying, "Well, back to the old drawing board."
The most reprinted is Peter Steiner
's 1993 drawing of two dogs at a computer, with one saying, "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog
". According to Mankoff, Steiner and the magazine have split more than $100,000 in fees paid for the licensing and reprinting of this single cartoon, with more than half going to Steiner.
Over seven decades, many hardcover compilations of cartoons from The New Yorker have been published, and in 2004, Mankoff edited The Complete Cartoons of The New Yorker, a 656 page collection with 2004 of the magazine's best cartoons published during 80 years, plus a double CD set with all 68,647 cartoons ever published in the magazine. This features a search function allowing readers to search for cartoons by a cartoonist's name or by year of publication. The newer group of cartoonists in recent years includes Pat Byrnes, Frank Cotham, Michael Crawford, Joe Dator, Drew Dernavich, J.C. Duffy, Carolita Johnson, P.C. Vey, Zachary Kanin, Farley Katz, Glen Le Lievre, Michael Maslin, Ariel Molvig, Paul Noth, Barbara Smaller, David Sipress, Mick Stevens, Julia Suits, Christopher Weyant and Jack Ziegler. The notion that some New Yorker cartoons have punchlines so non sequitur
that they are impossible to understand became a subplot in the Seinfeld
episode "The Cartoon", as well as a playful jab in an episode of The Simpsons
, "The Sweetest Apu
".
In April 2005, the magazine began using the last page of each issue for "The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest." Captionless cartoons by The New Yorkers regular cartoonists are printed each week. Captions are submitted by readers, and three are chosen as finalists. Readers then vote on the winner, and any U.S. resident age 18 or older can vote. Each contest winner receives a print of the cartoon (with the winning caption), signed by the artist who drew the cartoon.
(2008), based on a true account of the invention of the intermittent windshield wiper by John Seabrook
; Away From Her
, adapted from Alice Munro's short story "The Bear Came Over The Mountain", which debuted at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival
; The Namesake
(2007), similarly based on Jhumpa Lahiri
's novel which originated as a short story in the magazine; The Bridge (2006), based on Tad Friend
's 2003 non-fiction piece "Jumpers"; Brokeback Mountain
(2005), an adaptation of the short story by Annie Proulx
which first appeared in the October 13, 1997, issue of The New Yorker; Jonathan Safran Foer
's 2001 debut in The New Yorker, which later came to theaters in Liev Schreiber's debut as both screenwriter and director, Everything is Illuminated
(2005); Michael Cunningham
's The Hours
, which appeared in the pages of The New Yorker before becoming the film that garnered the 2002 Best Actress Academy Award for Nicole Kidman
; Adaptation (2002), which Charlie Kaufman
based on Susan Orlean
's The Orchid Thief, written for The New Yorker; Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes
, which also appeared, in part, in The New Yorker in 1996 before its film adaptation was released in 1999; The Addams Family
(1991) and its sequel, Addams Family Values
(1993), both inspired by the work of famed New Yorker cartoonist Charles Addams
; Brian De Palma
's Casualties of War
(1989), which began as a New Yorker article by Daniel Lang; Boys Don't Cry
(1999), starring Hilary Swank, began as an article in the magazine, and Iris
(2001), about the life of Iris Murdoch and John Bayley, the article written by John Bayley for the New Yorker, before he completed his full memoir, the film starring Judi Dench and Jim Broadbent; The Swimmer
(1968), starring Burt Lancaster
, based on a John Cheever short story from The New Yorker; In Cold Blood
(1967), the widely nominated adaptation of the 1965 non-fiction serial written for The New Yorker by Truman Capote
; Pal Joey
(1957), based on a series of stories by John O'Hara; The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
(1947) which began as a story by longtime New Yorker contributor James Thurber; and Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), adapted from Sally Benson
's short stories.
The history of The New Yorker has also been portrayed in film: In Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle
, a film about the celebrated Algonquin Round Table
starring Jennifer Jason Leigh
as Dorothy Parker
, Sam Robards
portrays founding editor Harold Ross trying to drum up support for his fledgling publication. The magazine's former editor, William Shawn
, is portrayed in Capote
(2005) and Infamous
(2006).
is the placement of diaeresis marks in words with repeating vowel
s—such as reëlected, preëminent and coöperate—in which the two vowel letters indicate separate vowel sounds. The magazine also continues to use a few spellings that are otherwise little used, such as "focusses" and "venders".
The magazine does not put the titles of plays or books in italics but simply sets them off with quotation marks. When referring to other publications that include locations in their names, it uses italics only for the "non-location" portion of the name, such as the Los Angeles Times or the Chicago Tribune.
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 more commonly observed style and puts the semicolon after the second quotation mark.
The magazine also spells out the names of numbers, such as "twenty-five hundred" instead of "2500", even for very large figures. It also spells out professional sports leagues with periods, e.g. N.B.A.
The New Yorkers signature display typeface, used for its nameplate and headlines and the masthead above The Talk of the Town section, is Irvin, named after its creator, the designer-illustrator Rea Irvin
.
The body text of all articles in The New Yorker is set in Adobe Caslon
.
Also according to the Audit Bureau of Circulation, The New Yorkers renewal rate (the percentage of subscribers who renew their subscription each year) is 85%—one of the highest reported rates in the industry. Mediamark Research Inc. reported that readers spend, on average, 81 minutes each week reading The New Yorker.
peering at a butterfly through a monocle
, was drawn by Rea Irvin
, the magazine's first art editor, based on an 1834 caricature of the then Count D'Orsay
which appeared as an illustration in the 11th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica
. The gentleman on the original cover, now referred to as "Eustace Tilley", is a character created by Corey Ford
for The New Yorker. The hero of a series entitled "The Making of a Magazine", which began on the inside front cover of the August 8 issue that first summer, Tilley was a younger man than the figure on 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, although Ford may have borrowed the name from Eustace Taylor, his fraternity brother from Delta Kappa Epsilon
at Columbia College of Columbia University
.
Tilley was always busy, and in illustrations by Johann Bull, always poised. He might be in Mexico, supervising the vast farms that 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.
The character has become a kind of mascot
for The New Yorker, frequently appearing in its pages and on promotional materials. Traditionally, Rea Irvin's original Tilley cover illustration is reused every year on the issue closest to the anniversary date of February 21, though on several occasions a newly drawn variation has been substituted.
", sometimes referred to as "A Parochial
New Yorker's View of the World" or "A New Yorker's View of the World", which depicts a map of the world as seen by self-absorbed
New Yorkers.
The illustration is split in two, with the bottom half of the image showing Manhattan
's 9th Avenue, 10th Avenue
, and the Hudson River
(appropriately labeled), and the top half depicting the rest of the world. The rest of the United States is the size of the three New York City blocks and is drawn as a square, with a thin brown strip along the Hudson representing "Jersey"
, the names of five cities (Los Angeles
; Washington, D.C.
; Las Vegas
; Kansas City
; and Chicago) and three states (Texas
, Utah
, and Nebraska
) scattered among a few rocks for the U.S. beyond New Jersey. The Pacific Ocean, perhaps half again as wide as the Hudson, separates the U.S. from three flattened land masses labeled China, Japan and Russia.
The illustration—humorously depicting New Yorkers' self-image of their place in the world, or perhaps outsiders' view of New Yorkers' self-image—inspired many similar works, including the poster for the 1984 film
Moscow on the Hudson
; that movie poster led to a lawsuit, Steinberg v. Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc.
, 663 F. Supp. 706 (S.D.N.Y.
1987), which held that Columbia Pictures
violated the copyright
that Steinberg held on his work.
The cover was later satirized by Barry Blitt for the cover of The New Yorker on October 6, 2008. The cover featured Sarah Palin
looking out of her window seeing only Alaska and in the very background Russia.
The March 21, 2009 cover of The Economist
, "How China sees the World", is also an homage to the original image, but depicting the viewpoint from Beijing's Chang An street instead of Manhattan.
worked for The New Yorker for ten years but resigned a few months after the September 11 terrorist attacks. The cover created by Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly for the September 24, 2001 issue of The New Yorker received wide acclaim and was voted in the top ten of magazine covers of the past 40 years by the American Society of Magazine Editors, which commented:
At first glance, the cover appears to be totally black, but upon close examination it reveals the silhouettes of the World Trade Center
towers in a slightly darker shade of black. In some situations, the ghost images only become visible when the magazine is tilted toward a light source. In September 2004, Spiegelman reprised the image on the cover of his book In the Shadow of No Towers
, in which he relates his experience of the Twin Towers attack and the psychological after-effects.
and Rick Meyerowitz
showing a map of New York in which various neighborhoods were labeled with humorous names reminiscent of Middle Eastern and Central Asian place names and referencing the neighborhood's real name or characteristics (e.g. "Fuhgeddabouditstan", "Botoxia"). The cover had some cultural resonance in the wake of September 11 and became a popular print and poster.
issue, the magazine printed a cover by Art Spiegelman
depicting a black woman and a Hasidic Jewish man kissing, referencing the Crown Heights riot
of 1991. The cover was criticized by both black and Jewish observers. Jack Salzman and Cornel West
describe the reaction to the cover as the magazine's "first national controversy."
presidential
nominee Barack Obama
in the turban
and salwar kameez typical of many Muslim
s, fist bumping with his wife, Michelle
, portrayed with an Afro
and wearing camouflage
trousers with an AK-47
assault rifle
slung over her back. They are standing in the Oval Office
, with a portrait of Osama Bin Laden
hanging on the wall and an American flag burning
in the fireplace in the background.
Many New Yorker readers saw the image as a lampoon of "The Politics of Fear", as the image was titled. Some of Obama's supporters as well as his presumptive Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain
, accused the magazine of publishing an incendiary cartoon whose irony could be lost on some readers. The New Yorker' s editor David Remnick said: "The intent of the cover is to satirize the vicious and racist attacks and rumors and misconceptions about the Obamas that have been floating around in the blogosphere
and are reflected in public opinion polls. What we set out to do was to throw all these images together, which are all over the top and to shine a kind of harsh light on them, to satirize them," citing the excesses in the image to rebuff the concern that it could be misunderstood, even by those unfamiliar with the magazine. In an interview on Larry King Live
shortly after the magazine issue began circulating, Obama said "Well, I know it was The New Yorkers attempt at satire... I don't think they were entirely successful with it..." But Obama also pointed to his own efforts to debunk the allegations portrayed in The New Yorker cover through a web site his campaign set up: "[They are] actually an insult against Muslim-Americans, something that we don't spend a lot of time talking about.""
Later that week, The Daily Show
s Jon Stewart
continued The New Yorker cover's argument about Obama stereotypes with a piece showcasing a montage of clips containing such stereotypes culled from various legitimate news sources. The New Yorker Obama cover was later parodied by Stewart and Stephen Colbert
on the October 3, 2008, cover of Entertainment Weekly
magazine, with Stewart as Obama and Colbert as Michelle, photographed exclusively for the magazine in New York City on September 18.
New Yorker covers are not always related to the contents of the magazine or are only tangentially so. In this case, the article in the July 21, 2008, issue about Obama did not discuss the attacks and rumors but rather Obama's political career to date. The New Yorker later endorsed Obama for president.
Condé Nast Publications
Condé Nast, a division of Advance Publications, is a magazine publisher. In the U.S., it produces 18 consumer magazines, including Architectural Digest, Bon Appétit, GQ, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and Vogue, as well as four business-to-business publications, 27 websites, and more than 50 apps...
. Starting as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is now published 47 times annually, with five of these issues covering two-week spans.
Although its reviews and events listings often focus on the cultural life of New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, The New Yorker has a wide audience outside of New York. It is well known for its illustrated and often topical covers, its commentaries on popular culture
Popular culture
Popular culture is the totality of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture, especially Western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the...
and eccentric Americana
Americana
Americana refers to artifacts, or a collection of artifacts, related to the history, geography, folklore and cultural heritage of the United States. Many kinds of material fall within the definition of Americana: paintings, prints and drawings; license plates or entire vehicles, household objects,...
; its attention to modern fiction
Fiction
Fiction is the form of any narrative or informative work that deals, in part or in whole, with information or events that are not factual, but rather, imaginary—that is, invented by the author. Although fiction describes a major branch of literary work, it may also refer to theatrical,...
by the inclusion of short stories
Short story
A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...
and literary reviews; its rigorous fact checking
Fact checker
A fact checker is the person who checks factual assertions in non-fictional text, usually intended for publication in a periodical, to determine their veracity and correctness...
and copyediting; its journalism
Journalism
Journalism is the practice of investigation and reporting of events, issues and trends to a broad audience in a timely fashion. Though there are many variations of journalism, the ideal is to inform the intended audience. Along with covering organizations and institutions such as government and...
on politics and social issues
Social issues
Social issues are controversial issues which relate to people's personal lives and interactions. Social issues are distinguished from economic issues...
; and its single-panel cartoons sprinkled throughout each issue.
History
The New Yorker debuted on February 21, 1925. It was founded by Harold RossHarold Ross
Harold Wallace Ross was an American journalist and founder of The New Yorker magazine, which he edited from the magazine's inception in 1925 to his death....
and his wife, Jane Grant
Jane Grant
Jane Grant was a New York City journalist who co-founded The New Yorker with her first husband, Harold Ross.-Her life:...
, a New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
reporter. Ross wanted to create a sophisticated humor magazine different from corny humor publications such as Judge, where he had worked, or Life
Life (magazine)
Life generally refers to three American magazines:*A humor and general interest magazine published from 1883 to 1936. Time founder Henry Luce bought the magazine in 1936 solely so that he could acquire the rights to its name....
. Ross partnered with entrepreneur Raoul H. Fleischmann to establish the F-R Publishing Company and established the magazine's first offices at 25 West 45th Street in Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
. Ross edited the magazine until his death in 1951. During the early, occasionally precarious years of its existence, the magazine prided itself on its cosmopolitan sophistication. Harold Ross famously declared in a 1925 prospectus for the magazine: "It has announced that it is not edited for the old lady in Dubuque
Dubuque, Iowa
Dubuque is a city in and the county seat of Dubuque County, Iowa, United States, located along the Mississippi River. In 2010 its population was 57,637, making it the ninth-largest city in the state and the county's population was 93,653....
."
Although the magazine never lost its touches of humor, it soon established itself as a pre-eminent forum for serious fiction
Fiction
Fiction is the form of any narrative or informative work that deals, in part or in whole, with information or events that are not factual, but rather, imaginary—that is, invented by the author. Although fiction describes a major branch of literary work, it may also refer to theatrical,...
literature
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
and journalism. Shortly after the end of World War II, John Hersey
John Hersey
John Richard Hersey was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American writer and journalist considered one of the earliest practitioners of the so-called New Journalism, in which storytelling devices of the novel are fused with non-fiction reportage...
's essay Hiroshima filled an entire issue. In subsequent decades the magazine published short stories by many of the most respected writers of the 20th and 21st centuries, including Ann Beattie
Ann Beattie
Ann Beattie is an American short story writer and novelist. She has received an award for excellence from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and a PEN/Bernard Malamud Award for excellence in the short story form. Her work has been compared to that of Alice Adams, J.D. Salinger,...
, John Cheever
John Cheever
John William Cheever was an American novelist and short story writer. He is sometimes called "the Chekhov of the suburbs." His fiction is mostly set in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, the Westchester suburbs, old New England villages based on various South Shore towns around Quincy,...
, Roald Dahl
Roald Dahl
Roald Dahl was a British novelist, short story writer, fighter pilot and screenwriter.Born in Wales to Norwegian parents, he served in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War, in which he became a flying ace and intelligence agent, rising to the rank of Wing Commander...
, Alice Munro
Alice Munro
Alice Ann Munro is a Canadian short-story writer, the winner of the 2009 Man Booker International Prize for her lifetime body of work, a three-time winner of Canada's Governor General's Award for fiction, and a perennial contender for the Nobel Prize...
, Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami
is a Japanese writer and translator. His works of fiction and non-fiction have garnered him critical acclaim and numerous awards, including the Franz Kafka Prize and Jerusalem Prize among others.He is considered an important figure in postmodern literature...
, Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a multilingual Russian novelist and short story writer. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist...
, John O'Hara
John O'Hara
John Henry O'Hara was an American writer. He initially became known for his short stories and later became a best-selling novelist whose works include Appointment in Samarra and BUtterfield 8. He was particularly known for an uncannily accurate ear for dialogue...
, Philip Roth
Philip Roth
Philip Milton Roth is an American novelist. He gained fame with the 1959 novella Goodbye, Columbus, an irreverent and humorous portrait of Jewish-American life that earned him a National Book Award...
, J.D. Salinger
J. D. Salinger
Jerome David Salinger was an American author, best known for his 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye, as well as his reclusive nature. His last original published work was in 1965; he gave his last interview in 1980....
, Irwin Shaw
Irwin Shaw
Irwin Shaw was a prolific American playwright, screenwriter, novelist, and short-story author whose written works have sold more than 14 million copies. He is best-known for his novel, The Young Lions about the fate of three soldiers during World War II that was made into a film starring Marlon...
, John Updike
John Updike
John Hoyer Updike was an American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic....
, Eudora Welty
Eudora Welty
Eudora Alice Welty was an American author of short stories and novels about the American South. Her novel The Optimist's Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973. Welty was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, among numerous awards. She was the first living author to have her works published...
, and E. B. White
E. B. White
Elwyn Brooks White , usually known as E. B. White, was an American writer. A long-time contributor to The New Yorker magazine, he also wrote many famous books for both adults and children, such as the popular Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little, and co-authored a widely used writing guide, The...
. Publication of Shirley Jackson
Shirley Jackson
Shirley Jackson was an American author. A popular writer in her time, her work has received increasing attention from literary critics in recent years...
's "The Lottery
The Lottery
"The Lottery" is a short story by Shirley Jackson, first published in the June 26, 1948, issue of The New Yorker. Written the same month it was published, it is ranked today as "one of the most famous short stories in the history of American literature"....
" drew more mail 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 variety, and they have ranged from Updike's introspective domestic narratives to the surrealism of Donald Barthelme
Donald Barthelme
Donald Barthelme was an American author known for his playful, postmodernist style of short fiction. Barthelme also worked as a newspaper reporter for the Houston Post, managing editor of Location magazine, director of the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston , co-founder of Fiction Donald...
, 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. Writers like Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was a 20th century American writer. His works such as Cat's Cradle , Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions blend satire, gallows humor and science fiction. He was known for his humanist beliefs and was honorary president of the American Humanist Association.-Early...
said that The New Yorker has been an effective institution for getting a large audience through the learning process required for appreciating modern literature.
The non-fiction feature articles (which usually make up the bulk of the magazine's content) cover an eclectic array of topics. Recent subjects have included eccentric evangelist Creflo Dollar
Creflo Dollar
Creflo Augustus Dollar, Jr. is an American Word of Faith teacher, pastor, and the founder of the non-denominational World Changers Church International based in Fulton County, Georgia. Creflo Dollar Ministerial Association , Creflo Dollar Ministries, and Arrow Records...
, the different ways in which humans perceive the passage of time and Munchausen syndrome by proxy
Munchausen syndrome by proxy
Münchausen syndrome by proxy is a label for a pattern of behavior in which care-givers deliberately exaggerate, fabricate, and/or induce physical, psychological, behavioral, and/or mental health problems in others. Other experts classified MSbP as a mental illness...
.
The magazine is notable for its editorial traditions. Under the rubric Profiles, it has long published articles about a range of notable people, from Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
, Henry R. Luce
Henry Luce
Henry Robinson Luce was an influential American publisher. He launched and closely supervised a stable of magazines that transformed journalism and the reading habits of upscale Americans...
and Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando, Jr. was an American movie star and political activist. "Unchallenged as the most important actor in modern American Cinema" according to the St...
to Hollywood restaurateur Michael Romanoff
Michael Romanoff
Michael Romanoff, born Hershel Geguzin, was a Hollywood restaurateur and actor born in Lithuania. He died of a heart attack in Los Angeles, California, in 1971. He is perhaps best known as the owner of Romanoff's, a Beverly Hills restaurant popular with Hollywood stars in the 1940s and 1950s...
, magician Ricky Jay
Ricky Jay
Richard Jay Potash , better known by the stage name Ricky Jay, is an American stage magician, actor, and writer. He is a sleight-of-hand expert and is notable for his card tricks, card throwing, memory feats, and stage patter.-Life and career:...
and mathematicians David and Gregory Chudnovsky
Chudnovsky brothers
The Chudnovsky brothers are American mathematicians known for their wide mathematical ability, their home-built supercomputers, and their close working relationship....
. Other enduring features have been "Goings on About Town," a listing of cultural and entertainment events in New York, and "The Talk of the Town," a miscellany of brief pieces—frequently humorous, whimsical or eccentric vignettes of life in New York—written in a breezily light style, or feuilleton
Feuilleton
Feuilleton was originally a kind of supplement attached to the political portion of French newspapers, consisting chiefly of non-political news and gossip, literature and art criticism, a chronicle of the latest fashions, and epigrams, charades and other literary trifles...
, although in recent years the section often begins with a serious commentary. For many years, newspaper snippets containing amusing errors, unintended meanings or badly mixed metaphors ("Block That Metaphor") have been used as filler items, accompanied by a witty retort. There is no masthead listing the editors and staff. And despite some changes, the magazine has kept much of its traditional appearance over the decades in typography, layout, covers and artwork. The magazine was acquired by Advance Publications
Advance Publications
Advance Publications, Inc., is an American media company owned by the descendants of S.I. Newhouse Sr., Donald Newhouse and S.I. Newhouse, Jr. It is named after the Staten Island Advance, the first newspaper owned by the Newhouse family...
, the media company owned by S.I. Newhouse
Samuel Irving Newhouse, Jr.
Samuel Irving Newhouse, Jr. , nicknamed Si Newhouse, is the chairman and CEO of Advance Publications, which, among other interests, owns Condé Nast, publisher of many marquee brands in the world of magazines such as Vogue, Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker. He is the son of Samuel Irving...
, in 1985.
Ross was succeeded by William Shawn
William Shawn
William Shawn was an American magazine editor who edited The New Yorker from 1952 until 1987.-Education and Early Life:...
(1951–1987), followed by Robert Gottlieb
Robert Gottlieb
Robert Adams Gottlieb , is an American writer and editor. From 1987 to 1992 he was the editor of The New Yorker.-Personal:Robert Gottlieb was born in New York City in 1931 and grew up in Manhattan...
(1987–1992) and Tina Brown
Tina Brown
Tina Brown, Lady Evans, CBE , is a journalist, magazine editor, columnist, talk-show host and author of The Diana Chronicles, a biography of Diana, Princess of Wales. Born a British citizen, she took United States citizenship in 2005 after emigrating in 1984 to edit Vanity Fair...
(1992–1998). Brown's nearly six-year tenure attracted the most controversy, thanks to her high profile (a marked contrast to that of the retiring Shawn) and the changes she made to a magazine that had retained a similar look and feel for the previous half century. She introduced color to the editorial pages (several years before The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
also did so) and photography, with less type on each page and a generally more modern layout. More substantively, she increased the coverage of current events and hot topics such as celebrities and business tycoons and placed short pieces throughout "Goings on About Town", including a racy column about nightlife in Manhattan. A new letters-to-the-editor page and the addition of authors’ bylines to their "Talk of the Town" pieces had the effect of making the magazine more personal. The current editor of The New Yorker is David Remnick
David Remnick
David Remnick is an American journalist, writer, and magazine editor. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1994 for his book Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire. Remnick has been editor of The New Yorker magazine since 1998. He was named "Editor of the Year" by Advertising Age in 2000...
, who took over in 1998 from Brown.
Wrote Tom Wolfe
Tom Wolfe
Thomas Kennerly "Tom" Wolfe, Jr. is a best-selling American author and journalist. He is one of the founders of the New Journalism movement of the 1960s and 1970s.-Early life and education:...
about the magazine's style: "The New Yorker style was one of leisurely meandering understatement, droll when in the humorous mode, tautological and litotical when in the serious mode, constantly amplified, qualified, adumbrated upon, nuanced and renuanced, until the magazine’s pale-gray pages became High Baroque triumphs of the relative clause and appository modifier."
As far back as the 1940s the magazine's commitment to fact-checking
Fact checker
A fact checker is the person who checks factual assertions in non-fictional text, usually intended for publication in a periodical, to determine their veracity and correctness...
was already well known. Yet the magazine played a role in a literary scandal and defamation lawsuit over two articles by Janet Malcolm
Janet Malcolm
Janet Malcolm is an American writer and journalist on staff at The New Yorker magazine. She is the author of Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession , In the Freud Archives and The Journalist and the Murderer ....
about Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
's legacy, that appeared in the 1990s. Questions were raised about the magazine's fact-checking process. As of 2010, The New Yorker employs 16 fact checkers.
Since the late 1990s, The New Yorker has used the Internet to publish current and archived material. It maintains a website with some content from the current issue (plus exclusive web-only content). Subscribers have access to the full current issue online, as well as a complete archive of back issues viewable as they were originally printed. In addition, The New Yorkers cartoons are available for purchase online. A digital archive of back issues from 1925 to April 2008 (representing more than 4,000 issues and half a million pages) has also been issued on DVD-ROMs and on a small portable hard drive. More recently, an iPad version of the current issue of the magazine has been released.
A New Yorker look-alike, Novy Ochevidets (The New Eyewitness), was launched in Russia in 2004. It folded in January 2005 after five months of circulation.
In its November 1, 2004 issue, the magazine for the first time endorsed a presidential candidate, choosing to endorse John Kerry
John Kerry
John Forbes Kerry is the senior United States Senator from Massachusetts, the 10th most senior U.S. Senator and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party in the 2004 presidential election, but lost to former President George W...
over George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
. They continued this in 2008, endorsing Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
over John McCain
John McCain
John Sidney McCain III is the senior United States Senator from Arizona. He was the Republican nominee for president in the 2008 United States election....
.
Cartoons
The New Yorker has featured cartoons (usually gag cartoonGag cartoon
A gag cartoon is most often a single-panel cartoon, usually including a hand-lettered or typeset caption beneath the drawing. A pantomime cartoon carries no caption...
s) since it began publication in 1925. The cartoon editor of The New Yorker for years was Lee Lorenz
Lee Lorenz
Lee Lorenz is an American cartoonist, most notable for his work in The New Yorker.Lorenz is an alumnus of Carnegie Tech and Pratt Institute. His first published cartoon appeared in Colliers in 1956, and two years later he became a contract contributor to The New Yorker, which has published more...
, who first began cartooning in 1956 and became a New Yorker contract contributor in 1958. After serving as the magazine's art editor from 1973 to 1993 (when he was replaced by Françoise Mouly
Françoise Mouly
Françoise Mouly is a Paris-born French artist and designer best known for her work with RAW, a showcase publication for cutting edge comic art, and as art editor of The New Yorker, a position she has held since 1993...
), he continued in the position of cartoon editor until 1998. His book, The Art of the New Yorker: 1925–1995 (Knopf, 1995), was the first comprehensive survey of all aspects of the magazine's graphics. In 1998, Robert Mankoff
Robert Mankoff
Robert Mankoff is the current cartoon editor for The New Yorker magazine. Before he succeeded Lee Lorenz as editor, Mankoff was a cartoonist for The New Yorker for 20 years....
took over as cartoon editor, and since then Mankoff has edited at least 14 collections of New Yorker cartoons.
The New Yorkers stable of cartoonists has included many important talents in American humor, including Charles Addams
Charles Addams
Charles "Chas" Samuel Addams was an American cartoonist known for his particularly black humor and macabre characters...
, Peter Arno
Peter Arno
Peter Arno was a U.S. cartoonist.-Biography:Born Curtis Arnoux Peters, Jr. in New York, New York, and educated at the Hotchkiss School and Yale University, his cartoons were published in The New Yorker from 1925–1968. They often depicted a cross-section of New York society from the 1920s through...
, Charles Barsotti
Charles Barsotti
Charles Barsotti is an American cartoonist who has contributed gag cartoons to major magazines.Born in San Marcos, Texas, Barsotti grew up in San Antonio and graduated from Texas State University in 1955. He has been the cartoon editor of The Saturday Evening Post and has been a staff cartoonist...
, George Booth, Roz Chast
Roz Chast
Rosalind "Roz" Chast is an American cartoonist and a staff cartoonist for The New Yorker. She grew up in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, the only child of an assistant principal and a high school teacher who subscribed to The New Yorker. Her earliest cartoons were published in Christopher Street...
, Tom Cheney
Tom Cheney (cartoonist)
Tom Cheney is an American cartoonist. He was born in Norfolk, Virginia and raised in Northern New York state. A staff cartoonist with The New Yorker, his work has appeared in over 500 publications in the United States and other countries, including National Lampoon, The Harvard Business Review,...
, Sam Cobean
Sam Cobean
Sam Cobean was a cartoonist, especially known for his work in The New Yorker in the 1940s and 1950s.His book of cartoons, The Naked Eye, has been published around the world. Likewise, the book published after his death, The Cartoons of Cobean has enjoyed worldwide popularity since its publication...
, Leo Cullum
Leo Cullum
Leo Aloysius Cullum was an American cartoonist, one of the more frequent contributors to The New Yorker with more than 800 gag cartoons published...
, Richard Decker
Richard Decker
Richard Decker, a cartoonist and illustrator, studied at the Pennsylvania School of Industrial Art and became famous for his cartoons published in The New Yorker....
Helen E. Hokinson, Ed Koren
Ed Koren
Edward Benjamin "Ed" Koren is a writer and illustrator of children's books and political cartoons, most notably in The New Yorker.-Personal:...
, Mary Petty
Mary Petty
Mary Petty was an illustrator of books and magazines best remembered for a series of covers done for The New Yorker featuring her invented Peabody family....
, George Price
George Price (New Yorker cartoonist)
George Price was a United States cartoonist who was born in Fort Lee, New Jersey.After doing advertising artwork in his youth, Price started doing cartoons for The New Yorker magazine in 1929...
, Charles Saxon
Charles Saxon
Charles David Saxon was an American cartoonist.Born in Brooklyn, he graduated from Columbia University in 1940. He worked as an editor at Dell Publishing and served as a bomber pilot in the Army Air Corps during World War II, flying 40 missions over Germany. After the war he rejoined Dell and...
, David Snell
David Snell (journalist)
David Snell was a reporter and cartoonist for the defunct Life Magazine and several other publications during his career as a journalist.-Early years, family, education:...
, Otto Soglow
Otto Soglow
Otto Soglow was an American cartoonist best known for his comic strip The Little King.Born in Yorkville, Manhattan, Soglow grew up in New York City, where he held various jobs as a teenager and made an unsuccessful effort to become an actor. His first job was painting designs on baby rattles...
, Saul Steinberg
Saul Steinberg
Saul Steinberg was a Romanian-born American cartoonist and illustrator, best known for his work for The New Yorker.-Biography:...
, William Steig
William Steig
William Steig was a prolific American cartoonist, sculptor and, later in life, an author of popular children's literature...
, Richard Taylor, James Thurber
James Thurber
James Grover Thurber was an American author, cartoonist and celebrated wit. Thurber was best known for his cartoons and short stories published in The New Yorker magazine.-Life:...
, Barney Tobey and Gahan Wilson
Gahan Wilson
Gahan Wilson is an American author, cartoonist and illustrator known for his cartoons depicting horror-fantasy situations...
.
Many early New Yorker cartoonists did not caption their own cartoons. In his book The Years with Ross, Thurber describes the newspaper's weekly art meeting, where cartoons submitted over the previous week would be brought up from the mail room to be gone over by Ross, the editorial department and a number of staff writers. Cartoons would often be rejected or sent back to artists with requested amendments, while others would be accepted and captions written for them. Some artists hired their own writers; Helen Hokinson hired James Reid Parker in 1931. (Brendan Gill
Brendan Gill
Brendan Gill wrote for The New Yorker for more than 60 years. He also contributed film criticism for Film Comment and wrote a popular book about his time at the New Yorker magazine.-Biography:...
relates in his book Here at The New Yorker that at one point in the early 1940s, the quality of the artwork submitted to the magazine seemed to improve. It was later found out that the office boy (a teenaged Truman Capote
Truman Capote
Truman Streckfus Persons , known as Truman Capote , was an American author, many of whose short stories, novels, plays, and nonfiction are recognized literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's and the true crime novel In Cold Blood , which he labeled a "nonfiction novel." At...
) had been acting as a volunteer art editor, dropping pieces he didn't like down the far edge of his desk.)
Several of the magazine's cartoons have climbed to a higher plateau of fame. One 1928 cartoon drawn by Carl Rose
Carl Rose
Carl Rose was an American cartoonist whose work appeared in The New Yorker, Popular Science, The Saturday Evening Post, and elsewhere. He received the National Cartoonists Society's Advertising and Illustration Award for 1958....
and captioned by E. B. White
E. B. White
Elwyn Brooks White , usually known as E. B. White, was an American writer. A long-time contributor to The New Yorker magazine, he also wrote many famous books for both adults and children, such as the popular Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little, and co-authored a widely used writing guide, The...
shows a mother telling her daughter, "It's broccoli, dear." The daughter responds, "I say it's spinach and I say the hell with it." Three years later, the Broadway musical Face the Music featured a musical number named "I Say It's Spinach". The catchphrase "back to the drawing board" originated with the 1941 Peter Arno cartoon showing an engineer walking away from a crashed plane, saying, "Well, back to the old drawing board."
The most reprinted is Peter Steiner
Peter Steiner (cartoonist)
Peter Steiner is an American cartoonist and novelist, best known for a 1993 cartoon published by The New Yorker which prompted the adage "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog." He is also a novelist who has published three crime novels.-Cartoons:...
's 1993 drawing of two dogs at a computer, with one saying, "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog
On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog
"On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog" is an adage which began as the caption of a cartoon by Peter Steiner published by The New Yorker on July 5, 1993. The cartoon features two dogs: one sitting on a chair in front of a computer, speaking the caption to a second dog sitting on the floor...
". According to Mankoff, Steiner and the magazine have split more than $100,000 in fees paid for the licensing and reprinting of this single cartoon, with more than half going to Steiner.
Over seven decades, many hardcover compilations of cartoons from The New Yorker have been published, and in 2004, Mankoff edited The Complete Cartoons of The New Yorker, a 656 page collection with 2004 of the magazine's best cartoons published during 80 years, plus a double CD set with all 68,647 cartoons ever published in the magazine. This features a search function allowing readers to search for cartoons by a cartoonist's name or by year of publication. The newer group of cartoonists in recent years includes Pat Byrnes, Frank Cotham, Michael Crawford, Joe Dator, Drew Dernavich, J.C. Duffy, Carolita Johnson, P.C. Vey, Zachary Kanin, Farley Katz, Glen Le Lievre, Michael Maslin, Ariel Molvig, Paul Noth, Barbara Smaller, David Sipress, Mick Stevens, Julia Suits, Christopher Weyant and Jack Ziegler. The notion that some New Yorker cartoons have punchlines so non sequitur
Non sequitur (absurdism)
A non sequitur is a conversational and literary device, often used for comedic purposes. It is a comment that, because of its apparent lack of meaning relative to what it follows, seems absurd to the point of being humorous or confusing....
that they are impossible to understand became a subplot in the Seinfeld
Seinfeld
Seinfeld is an American television sitcom that originally aired on NBC from July 5, 1989, to May 14, 1998, lasting nine seasons, and is now in syndication. It was created by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld, the latter starring as a fictionalized version of himself...
episode "The Cartoon", as well as a playful jab in an episode of The Simpsons
The Simpsons
The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its family of the same name, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie...
, "The Sweetest Apu
The Sweetest Apu
"The Sweetest Apu" is the nineteenth episode of The Simpsons thirteenth season. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on May 5, 2002. In the episode, Homer and his wife Marge discover that convenience store owner Apu is having an affair with the Squishee delivery lady working...
".
In April 2005, the magazine began using the last page of each issue for "The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest." Captionless cartoons by The New Yorkers regular cartoonists are printed each week. Captions are submitted by readers, and three are chosen as finalists. Readers then vote on the winner, and any U.S. resident age 18 or older can vote. Each contest winner receives a print of the cartoon (with the winning caption), signed by the artist who drew the cartoon.
Films
The New Yorker has been the source of a number of movies. Both fiction and non-fiction pieces have been adapted for the big screen, including: Flash of GeniusFlash of Genius (film)
Flash of Genius is a 2008 American biographical film directed by Marc Abraham. The screenplay by Philip Railsback, based on a 1993 New Yorker article by John Seabrook, focuses on Robert Kearns and his legal battle against the Ford Motor Company when they developed an intermittent windshield wiper...
(2008), based on a true account of the invention of the intermittent windshield wiper by John Seabrook
John Seabrook
John Seabrook is an American journalist who writes about technology and popular culture. He has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1993....
; Away From Her
Away From Her
Away from Her is a 2006 Canadian film which debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival and also played in the Premier category at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival...
, adapted from Alice Munro's short story "The Bear Came Over The Mountain", which debuted at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...
; The Namesake
The Namesake (film)
The Namesake is a 2006 film which was released in the United States on March 9, 2007, following screenings at film festivals in Toronto and New York City. It was directed by Mira Nair and is based upon the novel of the same name by Jhumpa Lahiri, who appeared in the movie. Sooni Taraporevala...
(2007), similarly based on Jhumpa Lahiri
Jhumpa Lahiri
Jhumpa Lahiri is a Bengali American author. Lahiri's debut short story collection, Interpreter of Maladies , won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and her first novel, The Namesake , was adapted into the popular film of the same name. She was born Nilanjana Sudeshna, which she says are both...
's novel which originated as a short story in the magazine; The Bridge (2006), based on Tad Friend
Tad Friend
Tad Friend is a staff writer for The New Yorker. His current focus of coverage is the entertainment industry, and he often writes the "Letter from California" for The New Yorker. His memoir, Cheerful Money: Me, My Family, and the Last Days of Wasp Splendor, was published by Little, Brown in...
's 2003 non-fiction piece "Jumpers"; Brokeback Mountain
Brokeback Mountain
Brokeback Mountain is a 2005 romantic drama film directed by Ang Lee. It is a film adaptation of the 1997 short story of the same name by Annie Proulx with the screenplay written by Diana Ossana and Larry McMurtry...
(2005), an adaptation of the short story by Annie Proulx
E. Annie Proulx
Edna Annie Proulx is an American journalist and author. Her second novel, The Shipping News , won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for fiction in 1994, and was made into a film in 2001...
which first appeared in the October 13, 1997, issue of The New Yorker; Jonathan Safran Foer
Jonathan Safran Foer
Jonathan Safran Foer is an American author best known for his novels Everything Is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close...
's 2001 debut in The New Yorker, which later came to theaters in Liev Schreiber's debut as both screenwriter and director, Everything is Illuminated
Everything Is Illuminated (film)
Everything Is Illuminated is a 2005 adventure/dramedy film, written and directed by Liev Schreiber and starring Elijah Wood and Eugene Hütz...
(2005); Michael Cunningham
Michael Cunningham
Michael Cunningham is an American writer, best known for his 1998 novel The Hours, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1999.-Early life and education:...
's The Hours
The Hours (film)
The Hours is a 2002 drama film directed by Stephen Daldry, and starring Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore and Ed Harris. The screenplay by David Hare is based on the 1999 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same title by Michael Cunningham....
, which appeared in the pages of The New Yorker before becoming the film that garnered the 2002 Best Actress Academy Award for Nicole Kidman
Nicole Kidman
Nicole Mary Kidman, AC is an American-born Australian actress, singer, film producer, spokesmodel, and humanitarian. After starring in a number of small Australian films and TV shows, Kidman's breakthrough was in the 1989 thriller Dead Calm...
; Adaptation (2002), which Charlie Kaufman
Charlie Kaufman
Charles Stuart "Charlie" Kaufman is an American screenwriter, producer, and director. His film work includes Being John Malkovich, Human Nature, Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Synecdoche, New York...
based on Susan Orlean
Susan Orlean
Susan Orlean is an American journalist. She has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1992, and has contributed articles to Vogue, Rolling Stone, Esquire, and Outside....
's The Orchid Thief, written for The New Yorker; Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes
Angela's Ashes
Angela's Ashes is a 1996 memoir by the Irish-American author Frank McCourt. The memoir consists of various anecdotes and stories of Frank McCourt's impoverished childhood and early adulthood in Brooklyn, New York and Limerick, Ireland, as well as McCourt's struggles with poverty, his father's...
, which also appeared, in part, in The New Yorker in 1996 before its film adaptation was released in 1999; The Addams Family
The Addams Family
The Addams Family is a group of fictional characters created by American cartoonist Charles Addams. As named by Charles Addams, the Addams Family characters include Gomez, Morticia, Uncle Fester, Lurch, Grandmama, Wednesday, Pugsley, and Thing....
(1991) and its sequel, Addams Family Values
Addams Family Values
Addams Family Values is a 1993 sequel to the 1991 comedy The Addams Family. The film was written by Paul Rudnick and directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, and many cast members from the original returned for the sequel, including Raúl Juliá, Anjelica Huston, Christopher Lloyd, and Christina Ricci...
(1993), both inspired by the work of famed New Yorker cartoonist Charles Addams
Charles Addams
Charles "Chas" Samuel Addams was an American cartoonist known for his particularly black humor and macabre characters...
; Brian De Palma
Brian De Palma
Brian Russell De Palma is an American film director and writer. In a career spanning over 40 years, he is probably best known for his suspense and crime thriller films, including such box office successes as the horror film Carrie, Dressed to Kill, Scarface, The Untouchables, and Mission:...
's Casualties of War
Casualties of War
Casualties of War is a 1989 war drama directed by Brian De Palma, with a screenplay by David Rabe, based on the actual events of the incident on Hill 192 in 1966 during the Vietnam War. It starred Michael J. Fox and Sean Penn....
(1989), which began as a New Yorker article by Daniel Lang; Boys Don't Cry
Boys Don't Cry (film)
Boys Don't Cry is a 1999 American independent romantic drama film directed by Kimberly Peirce and co-written by Andy Bienen. The film is a dramatization of the real-life story of Brandon Teena, a transgender man played by Hilary Swank, who pursues a relationship with a young woman, played by Chloë...
(1999), starring Hilary Swank, began as an article in the magazine, and Iris
Iris (2001 film)
Iris is a 2001 biographical film that tells the story of British novelist Iris Murdoch and her relationship with John Bayley. The film contrasts the start of their relationship, when Murdoch was an outgoing, dominant individual as compared to her timid and scholarly partner Bayley , and their...
(2001), about the life of Iris Murdoch and John Bayley, the article written by John Bayley for the New Yorker, before he completed his full memoir, the film starring Judi Dench and Jim Broadbent; The Swimmer
The Swimmer (film)
The Swimmer is a 1968 American film directed by Frank Perry and starring Burt Lancaster. The surreal, allegorical tale is based on the 1964 short story by John Cheever, adapted by Eleanor Perry, the director's wife...
(1968), starring Burt Lancaster
Burt Lancaster
Burton Stephen "Burt" Lancaster was an American film actor noted for his athletic physique and distinctive smile...
, based on a John Cheever short story from The New Yorker; In Cold Blood
In Cold Blood
In Cold Blood is a 1966 book by Truman Capote.In Cold Blood may also refer to:* In Cold Blood , a 1967 film and 1996 miniseries, both based on the book* In Cold Blood...
(1967), the widely nominated adaptation of the 1965 non-fiction serial written for The New Yorker by Truman Capote
Truman Capote
Truman Streckfus Persons , known as Truman Capote , was an American author, many of whose short stories, novels, plays, and nonfiction are recognized literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's and the true crime novel In Cold Blood , which he labeled a "nonfiction novel." At...
; Pal Joey
Pal Joey (film)
Pal Joey is a 1957 film, loosely adapted from the musical play of the same name, and starring Rita Hayworth, Frank Sinatra, and Kim Novak. Jo Ann Greer sang for Hayworth, as she had done previously in Affair in Trinidad and Miss Sadie Thompson. Kim Novak's singing voice was dubbed by Trudy Erwin...
(1957), based on a series of stories by John O'Hara; The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
"The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" is a short story by James Thurber. The most famous of Thurber's stories, it first appeared in The New Yorker on March 18, 1939, and was first collected in his book My World and Welcome to It...
(1947) which began as a story by longtime New Yorker contributor James Thurber; and Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), adapted from Sally Benson
Sally Benson
Sally Benson was an American screenwriter, who was also a prolific short story author, best known for her semi-autobiographical stories collected in Junior Miss and Meet Me in St...
's short stories.
The history of The New Yorker has also been portrayed in film: In Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle
Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle
Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle is a 1994 film scripted by writer/director Alan Rudolph and former Washington Star reporter Randy Sue Coburn...
, a film about the celebrated Algonquin Round Table
Algonquin Round Table
The Algonquin Round Table was a celebrated group of New York City writers, critics, actors and wits. Gathering initially as part of a practical joke, members of "The Vicious Circle", as they dubbed themselves, met for lunch each day at the Algonquin Hotel from 1919 until roughly 1929...
starring Jennifer Jason Leigh
Jennifer Jason Leigh
Jennifer Jason Leigh is an American film and stage actress, best known for her roles in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Single White Female, Last Exit to Brooklyn, Georgia and Short Cuts...
as Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker was an American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist, best known for her wit, wisecracks, and eye for 20th century urban foibles....
, Sam Robards
Sam Robards
Sam Prideaux Robards is an American actor.-Life and career:Robards was born in New York City, the son of actors Jason Robards and Lauren Bacall. He began his acting career in 1980 in an off-Broadway production of Album, and made his feature film debut in director Paul Mazursky's 1982 film Tempest....
portrays founding editor Harold Ross trying to drum up support for his fledgling publication. The magazine's former editor, William Shawn
William Shawn
William Shawn was an American magazine editor who edited The New Yorker from 1952 until 1987.-Education and Early Life:...
, is portrayed in Capote
Capote (film)
Capote is a 2005 biographical film about Truman Capote, following the events during the writing of Capote's non-fiction book In Cold Blood. Philip Seymour Hoffman won several awards, including the Academy Award for Best Actor, for his critically acclaimed portrayal of the title role. The movie was...
(2005) and Infamous
Infamous (film)
Infamous is a 2006 American drama film, based on the 1997 book by George Plimpton, Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career....
(2006).
Style
One uncommonly formal feature of the magazine's in-house styleStyle guide
A style guide or style manual is a set of standards for the writing and design of documents, either for general use or for a specific publication, organization or field...
is the placement of diaeresis marks in words with repeating vowel
Vowel
In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...
s—such as reëlected, preëminent and coöperate—in which the two vowel letters indicate separate vowel sounds. The magazine also continues to use a few spellings that are otherwise little used, such as "focusses" and "venders".
The magazine does not put the titles of plays or books in italics but simply sets them off with quotation marks. When referring to other publications that include locations in their names, it uses italics only for the "non-location" portion of the name, such as the Los Angeles Times or the Chicago Tribune.
Formerly, when a word or phrase in quotation marks came at the end of a phrase or clause that ended with a semicolon
Semicolon
The semicolon is a punctuation mark with several uses. The Italian printer Aldus Manutius the Elder established the practice of using the semicolon to separate words of opposed meaning and to indicate interdependent statements. "The first printed semicolon was the work of ... Aldus Manutius"...
, the semicolon would be put before the trailing quotation mark; now, however, the magazine follows the more commonly observed style and puts the semicolon after the second quotation mark.
The magazine also spells out the names of numbers, such as "twenty-five hundred" instead of "2500", even for very large figures. It also spells out professional sports leagues with periods, e.g. N.B.A.
The New Yorkers signature display typeface, used for its nameplate and headlines and the masthead above The Talk of the Town section, is Irvin, named after its creator, the designer-illustrator Rea Irvin
Rea Irvin
Rea Irvin was an American graphic artist. Although never formally credited as such, he served de facto as the first art editor of The New Yorker. He created the Eustace Tilley cover portrait and the New Yorker typeface. He first drew Tilley for the cover of the magazine's first issue on...
.
The body text of all articles in The New Yorker is set in Adobe Caslon
Caslon
Caslon refers to a number of serif typefaces designed by William Caslon I , and various revivals thereof.Caslon shares the irregularity characteristic of Dutch Baroque types. It is characterized by short ascenders and descenders, bracketed serifs, moderately-high contrast, robust texture, and...
.
Readership
Notwithstanding its title, The New Yorker is read nationwide with 53% of its circulation in the top ten U.S. metropolitan areas. According to Mediamark Research Inc., the average age of the New Yorker reader in 2009 is 47 (compared to 48 for news magazine subscribers and 46 for the nation). The average household income of The New Yorker readers in 2009 is $109,877 (the average income for a U.S. household with a subscription to a news magazine is $92,788 and the U.S. average household income is $50,233).Also according to the Audit Bureau of Circulation, The New Yorkers renewal rate (the percentage of subscribers who renew their subscription each year) is 85%—one of the highest reported rates in the industry. Mediamark Research Inc. reported that readers spend, on average, 81 minutes each week reading The New Yorker.
Eustace Tilley
The magazine's first cover illustration, a dandyDandy
A dandy is a man who places particular importance upon physical appearance, refined language, and leisurely hobbies, pursued with the appearance of nonchalance in a cult of Self...
peering at a butterfly through a monocle
Monocle
A monocle is a type of corrective lens used to correct or enhance the vision in only one eye. It consists of a circular lens, generally with a wire ring around the circumference that can be attached to a string. The other end of the string is then connected to the wearer's clothing to avoid losing...
, was drawn by Rea Irvin
Rea Irvin
Rea Irvin was an American graphic artist. Although never formally credited as such, he served de facto as the first art editor of The New Yorker. He created the Eustace Tilley cover portrait and the New Yorker typeface. He first drew Tilley for the cover of the magazine's first issue on...
, the magazine's first art editor, based on an 1834 caricature of the then Count D'Orsay
Alfred Guillaume Gabriel, Count D'Orsay
Alfred d'Orsay, known as the comte d'Orsay was a French amateur artist, dandy, and man of fashion in the early- to mid-19th century.-Life:...
which appeared as an illustration in the 11th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica
Encyclopædia Britannica
The Encyclopædia Britannica , published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia that is available in print, as a DVD, and on the Internet. It is written and continuously updated by about 100 full-time editors and more than 4,000 expert...
. The gentleman on the original cover, now referred to as "Eustace Tilley", is a character created by Corey Ford
Corey Ford
Corey Ford was an American humorist, author, outdoorsman, and screenwriter. He was also friendly with several members of the Algonquin Round Table and occasionally ate lunch there....
for The New Yorker. The hero of a series entitled "The Making of a Magazine", which began on the inside front cover of the August 8 issue that first summer, Tilley was a younger man than the figure on 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, although Ford may have borrowed the name from Eustace Taylor, his fraternity brother from Delta Kappa Epsilon
Delta Kappa Epsilon
Delta Kappa Epsilon is a fraternity founded at Yale College in 1844 by 15 men of the sophomore class who had not been invited to join the two existing societies...
at Columbia College of Columbia University
Columbia College of Columbia University
Columbia College is the oldest undergraduate college at Columbia University, situated on the university's main campus in Morningside Heights in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1754 by the Church of England as King's College, receiving a Royal Charter from King George II...
.
Tilley was always busy, and in illustrations by Johann Bull, always poised. He might be in Mexico, supervising the vast farms that 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
Sargasso Sea
The Sargasso Sea is a region in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by ocean currents. It is bounded on the west by the Gulf Stream; on the north, by the North Atlantic Current; on the east, by the Canary Current; and on the south, by the North Atlantic Equatorial Current. This...
, 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.
The character has become a kind of mascot
Mascot
The term mascot – defined as a term for any person, animal, or object thought to bring luck – colloquially includes anything used to represent a group with a common public identity, such as a school, professional sports team, society, military unit, or brand name...
for The New Yorker, frequently appearing in its pages and on promotional materials. Traditionally, Rea Irvin's original Tilley cover illustration is reused every year on the issue closest to the anniversary date of February 21, though on several occasions a newly drawn variation has been substituted.
"View of the World" cover
Saul Steinberg created 85 covers and 642 internal drawings and illustrations for the magazine. His most famous work is probably its March 29, 1976 cover, an illustration titled "View of the World from 9th AvenueNinth Avenue (Manhattan)
Ninth Avenue / Columbus Avenue is a southbound thoroughfare on the West Side of Manhattan in New York City. Traffic runs downtown along its full length...
", sometimes referred to as "A Parochial
Parochialism
Parochialism means being provincial, being narrow in scope, or considering only small sections of an issue. It may, particularly when used pejoratively, be contrasted to universalism....
New Yorker's View of the World" or "A New Yorker's View of the World", which depicts a map of the world as seen by self-absorbed
Narcissism
Narcissism is a term with a wide range of meanings, depending on whether it is used to describe a central concept of psychoanalytic theory, a mental illness, a social or cultural problem, or simply a personality trait...
New Yorkers.
The illustration is split in two, with the bottom half of the image showing Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
's 9th Avenue, 10th Avenue
Tenth Avenue (Manhattan)
Tenth Avenue, known as Amsterdam Avenue north of 59th Street, is a north-south thoroughfare on the West Side of Manhattan in New York City. It carries uptown traffic as far as West 110th Street, also known as Cathedral Parkway for the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine...
, and the Hudson River
Hudson River
The Hudson is a river that flows from north to south through eastern New York. The highest official source is at Lake Tear of the Clouds, on the slopes of Mount Marcy in the Adirondack Mountains. The river itself officially begins in Henderson Lake in Newcomb, New York...
(appropriately labeled), and the top half depicting the rest of the world. The rest of the United States is the size of the three New York City blocks and is drawn as a square, with a thin brown strip along the Hudson representing "Jersey"
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
, the names of five cities (Los Angeles
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
; Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
; Las Vegas
Las Vegas, Nevada
Las Vegas is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada and is also the county seat of Clark County, Nevada. Las Vegas is an internationally renowned major resort city for gambling, shopping, and fine dining. The city bills itself as The Entertainment Capital of the World, and is famous...
; Kansas City
Kansas City, Missouri
Kansas City, Missouri is the largest city in the U.S. state of Missouri and is the anchor city of the Kansas City Metropolitan Area, the second largest metropolitan area in Missouri. It encompasses in parts of Jackson, Clay, Cass, and Platte counties...
; and Chicago) and three states (Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
, Utah
Utah
Utah is a state in the Western United States. It was the 45th state to join the Union, on January 4, 1896. Approximately 80% of Utah's 2,763,885 people live along the Wasatch Front, centering on Salt Lake City. This leaves vast expanses of the state nearly uninhabited, making the population the...
, and Nebraska
Nebraska
Nebraska is a state on the Great Plains of the Midwestern United States. The state's capital is Lincoln and its largest city is Omaha, on the Missouri River....
) scattered among a few rocks for the U.S. beyond New Jersey. The Pacific Ocean, perhaps half again as wide as the Hudson, separates the U.S. from three flattened land masses labeled China, Japan and Russia.
The illustration—humorously depicting New Yorkers' self-image of their place in the world, or perhaps outsiders' view of New Yorkers' self-image—inspired many similar works, including the poster for the 1984 film
1984 in film
-Events:* The Walt Disney Company founds Touchstone Pictures to release movies with subject matter deemed inappropriate for the Disney name.* Tri-Star Pictures, a joint venture of Columbia Pictures, HBO, and CBS, releases its first film....
Moscow on the Hudson
Moscow on the Hudson
Moscow on the Hudson is a 1984 comedy-drama film starring Robin Williams, and directed by Paul Mazursky. Williams plays a Soviet circus musician who defects from the Soviet Union while on a visit to the United States...
; that movie poster led to a lawsuit, Steinberg v. Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc.
Steinberg v. Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc.
Steinberg v. Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc., 663 F. Supp. 706 was a federal case in which artist Saul Steinberg sued various parties involved with producing and promoting the 1984 movie "Moscow on the Hudson", claiming that a promotional poster for the movie infringed his copyright in a...
, 663 F. Supp. 706 (S.D.N.Y.
United States District Court for the Southern District of New York
The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York is a federal district court. Appeals from the Southern District of New York are taken to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (in case...
1987), which held that Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies...
violated the copyright
Copyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...
that Steinberg held on his work.
The cover was later satirized by Barry Blitt for the cover of The New Yorker on October 6, 2008. The cover featured Sarah Palin
Sarah Palin
Sarah Louise Palin is an American politician, commentator and author. As the Republican Party nominee for Vice President in the 2008 presidential election, she was the first Alaskan on the national ticket of a major party and first Republican woman nominated for the vice-presidency.She was...
looking out of her window seeing only Alaska and in the very background Russia.
The March 21, 2009 cover of The Economist
The Economist
The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...
, "How China sees the World", is also an homage to the original image, but depicting the viewpoint from Beijing's Chang An street instead of Manhattan.
9/11
Hired by Tina Brown in 1992, Art SpiegelmanArt Spiegelman
Art Spiegelman is an American comics artist, editor, and advocate for the medium of comics, best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning comic book memoir, Maus. His works are published with his name in lowercase: art spiegelman.-Biography:Spiegelman was born in Stockholm, Sweden, to Polish Jews...
worked for The New Yorker for ten years but resigned a few months after the September 11 terrorist attacks. The cover created by Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly for the September 24, 2001 issue of The New Yorker received wide acclaim and was voted in the top ten of magazine covers of the past 40 years by the American Society of Magazine Editors, which commented:
- New Yorker Covers Editor Françoise Mouly repositioned Art Spiegelman's silhouettes, inspired by Ad ReinhardtAd ReinhardtAdolph Frederick Reinhardt was an Abstract painter active in New York beginning in the 1930s and continuing through the 1960s. He was a member of the American Abstract Artists and was a part of the movement centered around the Betty Parsons Gallery that became known as Abstract Expressionism...
's black-on-black paintings, so that the North Tower's antenna breaks the "W" of the magazine's logo. Spiegelman wanted to see the emptiness, and find the awful/awe-filled image of all that disappeared the on 9/11. The silhouetted Twin Towers were printed in a fifth, black ink, on a field of black made up of the standard four color printing inks. An overprinted clear varnish helps create the ghost images that linger, insisting on their presence through the blackness.
At first glance, the cover appears to be totally black, but upon close examination it reveals the silhouettes of the World Trade Center
World Trade Center
The original World Trade Center was a complex with seven buildings featuring landmark twin towers in Lower Manhattan, New York City, United States. The complex opened on April 4, 1973, and was destroyed in 2001 during the September 11 attacks. The site is currently being rebuilt with five new...
towers in a slightly darker shade of black. In some situations, the ghost images only become visible when the magazine is tilted toward a light source. In September 2004, Spiegelman reprised the image on the cover of his book In the Shadow of No Towers
In the Shadow of No Towers
In the Shadow of No Towers is a comic by Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic artist Art Spiegelman.-Overview:The comic evolved from Spiegelman's experiences during the September 11 terrorist attacks...
, in which he relates his experience of the Twin Towers attack and the psychological after-effects.
"New Yorkistan"
In the December 2001 issue the magazine printed a cover by Maira KalmanMaira Kalman
Maira Kalman, born in 1949, is an American illustrator, author, artist, and designer. Born in Tel Aviv, Kalman came to New York City with her family at age 4. She attended the High School of Music and Art, now LaGuardia High School....
and Rick Meyerowitz
Rick Meyerowitz
Rick Meyerowitz is an American artist. He started drawing during his childhood and attended art school at Boston University...
showing a map of New York in which various neighborhoods were labeled with humorous names reminiscent of Middle Eastern and Central Asian place names and referencing the neighborhood's real name or characteristics (e.g. "Fuhgeddabouditstan", "Botoxia"). The cover had some cultural resonance in the wake of September 11 and became a popular print and poster.
Crown Heights in 1993
For the 1993 Valentine's DayValentine's Day
Saint Valentine's Day, commonly shortened to Valentine's Day, is an annual commemoration held on February 14 celebrating love and affection between intimate companions. The day is named after one or more early Christian martyrs named Saint Valentine, and was established by Pope Gelasius I in 496...
issue, the magazine printed a cover by Art Spiegelman
Art Spiegelman
Art Spiegelman is an American comics artist, editor, and advocate for the medium of comics, best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning comic book memoir, Maus. His works are published with his name in lowercase: art spiegelman.-Biography:Spiegelman was born in Stockholm, Sweden, to Polish Jews...
depicting a black woman and a Hasidic Jewish man kissing, referencing the Crown Heights riot
Crown Heights riot
The Crown Heights Riot was a three-day riot in the United States that occurred August 19–21, 1991. It took place in the Crown Heights neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn....
of 1991. The cover was criticized by both black and Jewish observers. Jack Salzman and Cornel West
Cornel West
Cornel Ronald West is an American philosopher, author, critic, actor, civil rights activist and prominent member of the Democratic Socialists of America....
describe the reaction to the cover as the magazine's "first national controversy."
2008 Obama cover satire and controversy
"The Politics of Fear", a cartoon by Barry Blitt featured on the cover of the July 21, 2008, issue, depicts then presumptive DemocraticDemocratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
presidential
United States presidential election, 2008
The United States presidential election of 2008 was the 56th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on November 4, 2008. Democrat Barack Obama, then the junior United States Senator from Illinois, defeated Republican John McCain, the senior U.S. Senator from Arizona. Obama received 365...
nominee Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
in the turban
Turban
In English, Turban refers to several types of headwear popularly worn in the Middle East, North Africa, Punjab, Jamaica and Southwest Asia. A commonly used synonym is Pagri, the Indian word for turban.-Styles:...
and salwar kameez typical of many Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
s, fist bumping with his wife, Michelle
Michelle Obama
Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama is the wife of the 44th and incumbent President of the United States, Barack Obama, and is the first African-American First Lady of the United States...
, portrayed with an Afro
Afro
Afro, sometimes shortened to fro and also known as a "natural", is a hairstyle worn naturally by people with lengthy kinky hair texture or specifically styled in such a fashion by individuals with naturally curly or straight hair...
and wearing camouflage
Military camouflage
Military camouflage is one of many means of deceiving an enemy. In practice, it is the application of colour and materials to battledress and military equipment to conceal them from visual observation. The French slang word camouflage came into common English usage during World War I when the...
trousers with an AK-47
AK-47
The AK-47 is a selective-fire, gas-operated 7.62×39mm assault rifle, first developed in the Soviet Union by Mikhail Kalashnikov. It is officially known as Avtomat Kalashnikova . It is also known as a Kalashnikov, an "AK", or in Russian slang, Kalash.Design work on the AK-47 began in the last year...
assault rifle
Assault rifle
An assault rifle is a selective fire rifle that uses an intermediate cartridge and a detachable magazine. Assault rifles are the standard infantry weapons in most modern armies...
slung over her back. They are standing in the Oval Office
Oval Office
The Oval Office, located in the West Wing of the White House, is the official office of the President of the United States.The room features three large south-facing windows behind the president's desk, and a fireplace at the north end...
, with a portrait of Osama Bin Laden
Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was the founder of the militant Islamist organization Al-Qaeda, the jihadist organization responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States and numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets...
hanging on the wall and an American flag burning
Flag desecration
Flag desecration is a term applied to various acts that intentionally destroy, damage or mutilate a flag in public, most often a national flag. Often, such action is intended to make a political point against a country or its policies...
in the fireplace in the background.
Many New Yorker readers saw the image as a lampoon of "The Politics of Fear", as the image was titled. Some of Obama's supporters as well as his presumptive Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain
John McCain
John Sidney McCain III is the senior United States Senator from Arizona. He was the Republican nominee for president in the 2008 United States election....
, accused the magazine of publishing an incendiary cartoon whose irony could be lost on some readers. The New Yorker
Blogosphere
The blogosphere is made up of all blogs and their interconnections. The term implies that blogs exist together as a connected community or as a social network in which everyday authors can publish their opinions...
and are reflected in public opinion polls. What we set out to do was to throw all these images together, which are all over the top and to shine a kind of harsh light on them, to satirize them," citing the excesses in the image to rebuff the concern that it could be misunderstood, even by those unfamiliar with the magazine. In an interview on Larry King Live
Larry King Live
Larry King Live is an American talk show hosted by Larry King on CNN from 1985 to 2010. It was CNN's most watched and longest-running program, with over one million viewers nightly....
shortly after the magazine issue began circulating, Obama said "Well, I know it was The New Yorkers attempt at satire... I don't think they were entirely successful with it..." But Obama also pointed to his own efforts to debunk the allegations portrayed in The New Yorker cover through a web site his campaign set up: "[They are] actually an insult against Muslim-Americans, something that we don't spend a lot of time talking about.""
Later that week, The Daily Show
The Daily Show
The Daily Show , is an American late night satirical television program airing each Monday through Thursday on Comedy Central. The half-hour long show premiered on July 21, 1996, and was hosted by Craig Kilborn until December 1998...
s Jon Stewart
Jon Stewart
Jon Stewart is an American political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic and stand-up comedian...
continued The New Yorker cover's argument about Obama stereotypes with a piece showcasing a montage of clips containing such stereotypes culled from various legitimate news sources. The New Yorker Obama cover was later parodied by Stewart and Stephen Colbert
Stephen Colbert
Stephen Tyrone Colbert is an American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor. He is the host of Comedy Central's The Colbert Report, a satirical news show in which Colbert portrays a caricatured version of conservative political pundits.Colbert originally studied to be an...
on the October 3, 2008, cover of Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
magazine, with Stewart as Obama and Colbert as Michelle, photographed exclusively for the magazine in New York City on September 18.
New Yorker covers are not always related to the contents of the magazine or are only tangentially so. In this case, the article in the July 21, 2008, issue about Obama did not discuss the attacks and rumors but rather Obama's political career to date. The New Yorker later endorsed Obama for president.
See also
- Culture of New York CityCulture of New York CityThe culture of New York City is reflected by the city's size and variety. Many American cultural movements first emerged in the city. The Harlem Renaissance established the African-American renaissance in the United States, while American modern dance developed in New York in the early 20th century...
- List of The New Yorker contributors
- Media of New York CityMedia of New York CityThe media of New York City are internationally influential, and include some of the most important newspapers, largest publishing houses, most prolific television studios, and biggest record companies in the world...
Books
- Ross and the New Yorker by Dale Kramer (1951)
- The Years with Ross by James ThurberJames ThurberJames Grover Thurber was an American author, cartoonist and celebrated wit. Thurber was best known for his cartoons and short stories published in The New Yorker magazine.-Life:...
(1959) - Ross, the New Yorker and Me by Jane GrantJane GrantJane Grant was a New York City journalist who co-founded The New Yorker with her first husband, Harold Ross.-Her life:...
(1968) - Here at The New YorkerHere at The New YorkerHere at The New Yorker is a 1975 best-selling book by American writer Brendan Gill, writer and drama critic for the magazine The New Yorker.-The book:...
by Brendan GillBrendan GillBrendan Gill wrote for The New Yorker for more than 60 years. He also contributed film criticism for Film Comment and wrote a popular book about his time at the New Yorker magazine.-Biography:...
(1975) - About the New Yorker and Me by E.J. KahnEly Jacques Kahn, Jr.Ely Jacques Kahn, Jr. was an American writer under the byline E.J. Kahn, Jr. with The New Yorker for five decades....
(1979) - Onward and Upward: A Biography of Katharine S. White by Linda H. Davis (1987)
- At Seventy: More about the New Yorker and Me by E.J. KahnEly Jacques Kahn, Jr.Ely Jacques Kahn, Jr. was an American writer under the byline E.J. Kahn, Jr. with The New Yorker for five decades....
(1988) - Katharine and E.B. White: An Affectionate Memoir by Isabel Russell (1988)
- The Last Days of The New Yorker by Gigi Mahon (1989)
- Genius in Disguise: Harold Ross of the New Yorker by Thomas Kunkel (1997)
- Here But Not Here: My Life with William Shawn and the New Yorker by Lillian RossLillian Ross (journalist)Lillian Ross is an American journalist and author who has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1945. She was born in Syracuse, New York, the daughter of Louis and Edna Ross. With the exception of her memoir Here but Not Here, about her relationship with William Shawn, she has been...
(1998) - Remembering Mr. Shawn's New Yorker: The Invisible Art of Editing by Ved MehtaVed MehtaVed Parkash Mehta is a writer who was born in Lahore, British India to a Hindu family. He lost his sight at the age of four as the result of an attack of cerebrospinal meningitis...
(1998) - Some Times in America: and a life in a year at the New Yorker by Alexander Chancellor (1999)
- The World Through a Monocle: The New Yorker at Midcentury by Mary F. Corey (1999)
- About Town: The New Yorker and the World It Made by Ben YagodaBen YagodaBen Yagoda is a professor of journalism and English at the University of Delaware.Born to Louis Yagoda and the former Harriet Lewis, he grew up in New Rochelle, New York, and entered Yale University to study English in 1971...
(2000) - Covering the New Yorker: Cutting-Edge Covers from a Literary Institution by Françoise MoulyFrançoise MoulyFrançoise Mouly is a Paris-born French artist and designer best known for her work with RAW, a showcase publication for cutting edge comic art, and as art editor of The New Yorker, a position she has held since 1993...
(2000) - Defining New Yorker Humor by Judith Yaross Lee (2000)
- Gone: The Last Days of the New Yorker, by Renata AdlerRenata AdlerRenata Adler is an American author, journalist and film critic.-Background and education:Adler was born in Milan, Italy, and grew up in Danbury, Connecticut. After gaining a B.A. in philosophy and German from Bryn Mawr, Adler studied for an M.A. in Comparative Literature at Harvard under I. A...
(2000) - Letters from the Editor: The New Yorker's Harold Ross edited by Thomas Kunkel (2000; letters covering the years 1917 to 1951)
- New Yorker Profiles 1925–1992: A Bibliography compiled by Gail Shivel (2000)
- NoBrow: The Culture of Marketing – the Marketing of Culture by John Seabrook (2000)
- Fierce Pajamas: An Anthology of Humor Writing from The New Yorker by David Reminick and Henry Finder (2002)
- Christmas at The New Yorker: Stories, Poems, Humor, and Art (2003)
- A Life of Privilege, Mostly by Gardner Botsford (2003)
- Maeve Brennan: Homesick at the New Yorker by Angela Bourke (2004)
- Let Me Finish by Roger AngellRoger AngellRoger Angell is an American essayist. He has been a regular contributor to The New Yorker and was its chief fiction editor for many years...
(Harcourt, 2006)
Movies
- Top Hat and Tales: Harold Ross and the Making of the New Yorker (Carousel Film and Video, 2001, 47 minutes)