The New York Times Magazine - History

History

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

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

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

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