The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is 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 also produces long-form journalism and shorter articles and commentary on a variety of topics, has a wide audience outside New York, and is read internationally.
For other uses, see New Yorker (disambiguation).Editor
- Politics
- social issues
- art
- humor
- culture
47 issues/year
7+7⁄8 by 10+3⁄4 inches (200 mm × 273 mm)[3]
1,231,715[4]
February 21, 1925
United States
New York City
It is well known for its illustrated and often topical covers,[5] its commentaries on popular culture and eccentric American culture, its attention to modern fiction by the inclusion of short stories and literary reviews, its rigorous fact checking and copy editing,[6][7] its journalism on politics and social issues, and its single-panel cartoons sprinkled throughout each issue.
Crosswords and puzzles[edit]
In April 2018, The New Yorker launched a crossword puzzle series with a weekday crossword published every Monday. Subsequently, it launched a second, weekend crossword that appears on Fridays and relaunched cryptic puzzles that were run in the magazine in the late 1990s. In June 2021, it began publishing new cryptics weekly.[47] In July 2021, The New Yorker introduced Name Drop, a trivia game, which is posted online weekdays.[48] In March 2022, The New Yorker moved to publishing online crosswords every weekday, with decreasing difficulty Monday through Thursday and themed puzzles on Fridays.[49] The puzzles are written by a rotating stable of 13 constructors. They integrate cartoons into the solving experience. The Christmas 2019 issue featured a crossword puzzle by Patrick Berry that had cartoons as clues, with the answers being captions for the cartoons. In December 2019, Liz Maynes-Aminzade was named The New Yorker's first puzzles and games editor.
Style[edit]
The New Yorker's 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.[84] The body text of all articles in The New Yorker is set in Adobe Caslon.[85]
One uncommonly formal feature of the magazine's in-house style is the placement of diaeresis marks in words with repeating vowels—such as reëlected, preëminent, and coöperate—in which the two vowel letters indicate separate vowel sounds.[86] The magazine also continues to use a few spellings that are otherwise little used in American English, such as fuelled, focussed, venders, teen-ager,[87] traveller, marvellous, carrousel,[88] and cannister.[89]
The magazine also spells out the names of numerical amounts, such as "two million three hundred thousand dollars" instead of "$2.3 million", even for very large figures.[90]
Fact-checking[edit]
In 1927, The New Yorker ran an article about Edna St. Vincent Millay that contained multiple factual errors, and her mother threatened to sue the publication for libel.[91] Consequently, the magazine developed extensive fact-checking procedures, which became integral to its reputation as early as the 1940s.[92] In 2019, the Columbia Journalism Review said that "no publication has been more consistently identified with its rigorous fact-checking".[91] As of 2010, it employs 16 fact-checkers.[93]
At least two defamation lawsuits have been filed over articles published in the magazine, though neither were won by the plaintiff. Two 1983 articles by Janet Malcolm about Sigmund Freud's legacy led to a lawsuit from writer Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, who claimed that Malcolm had fabricated quotes attributed to him.[94] After years of proceedings and appeals, a jury found in Malcolm's favor in 1994.[95] In 2010, David Grann wrote an article for the magazine about art expert Peter Paul Biro that scrutinized and expressed skepticism about Biro's stated methods to identify forgeries.[96] Biro sued The New Yorker for defamation, alongside multiple other news outlets that reported on the article, but the case was summarily dismissed.[96][97][98][99]
Readership[edit]
Despite its title, The New Yorker is read nationwide, with 53 percent of its circulation in the top 10 U.S. metropolitan areas. According to Mediamark Research Inc., the average age of The New Yorker readers in 2009 was 47 (compared to 43 in 1980 and 46 in 1990). The average household income of The New Yorker readers in 2009 was $109,877 (the average income in 1980 was $62,788 and the average income in 1990 was $70,233).[100]
Politically, the magazine's readership holds generally liberal views. According to a 2014 Pew Research Center survey, 77% of The New Yorker's readers have left-of-center political values, and 52% of them hold "consistently liberal" political values.[101]
