David Remnick - Career at The New Yorker

Career At The New Yorker

Remnick became a staff writer at The New Yorker in September, 1992, after ten years at The Washington Post.

Remnick's 1997 New Yorker article, "Kid Dynamite Blows Up", about boxer Mike Tyson, won a National Magazine Award. In 1998, he became editor, succeeding Tina Brown. Remnick promoted Hendrik Hertzberg, a former Jimmy Carter speechwriter and former editor of The New Republic, to write the lead pieces in “Talk of the Town,” the magazine’s opening section. In 2005, Remnick earned $1 million for his work as the magazine's editor.

In 2003, he wrote an editorial supporting the Iraq war in the days when it started. In 2004, for the first time in its 80-year history, The New Yorker endorsed a presidential candidate, John Kerry.

In May 2009, Remnick was featured in a long-form Twitter account of Dan Baum's career as a New Yorker staff writer. The tweets, written over the course of a week, described the difficult relationship between Baum and Remnick, his editor.

Remnick's biography of President Barack Obama, The Bridge, was released on April 6, 2010. It features hundreds of interviews with friends, colleagues, and other witnesses to Obama's rise to the presidency of the United States. The book has been widely reviewed in journals.

In 2010, Remnick lent his support to the campaign urging the release of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, the Iranian woman sentenced to death by stoning after being convicted of committing adultery.