Before the likes of Vanity Fair and People Magazine, there was New York Magazine, immortalizing the antics of the movers and shakers of New York society and capturing the essence of a whole generation of young Manhattenites in all their social, political and cultural savvy during the 1970s.
Thirty-five years ago, Clay Felker, Trinity ’51 and former editor of The Chronicle, founded New York with the hopes of making it the talk of the town—establishing what the upper echelon, and those who wished to be like them, “should and shouldn’t want.” New York staff writer Michael Wolff reflected on the young Felker in a 2004 story, calling him an aspiring “mogul” with “over-the-top ambition... overflowing and loquacious.”
“My city is a city of ambition. Because New York is so expensive… you can’t live there and work unless you are ambitious,” said Felker, who also wrote for Sports Illustrated and Esquire Magazine before creating the genre of the “city” magazine with New York. “I wanted to focus on one thing—I didn’t want to make the magazine about the nation; I was interested in New York City.”
What made New York this “buzz-worthy,” must-read cultural phenomenon was Felker’s unique aesthetic and literary vision for a magazine that captured the fantasy of what was supposed to be New York living.
From the best to the worst, the fanciest restaurants to the cheapest eats, New York helped set the bar. “We were establishing the best way to live in New York City for a whole range of ‘consumers,’’’ Felker said. “We focused on people who loved the city and those who hated it.... We suggested that some of the elected officials should be put in jail. We weren’t just a sales magazine. We were the best of everything possible.”
But what fewer people recognize about New York is that it helped to reestablish what its former staff writer and famed novelist Tom Wolfe called “new journalism.”
“New journalism is really literary journalism—the use of standard literary devices applied to reporting,” Felker said. “It’s a short story, with a beginning, middle and end. While it was called ‘new journalism,’ there was in effect nothing new about it.”
Felker came upon “new journalism” while at Duke. Wandering through Perkins’ voluminous basement periodical stash, he came across newspapers from the Civil War. After reading articles from the vintage papers for hours, Felker realized that these pieces were much more interestingly reported. “I realized that their reporting was literary journalism, where narrative form is primary,” he said, “A narrative form is the key. It was a very distinct voice for America.”
This voice carried New York to new heights. Felker made New York’s style of reporting as central to the magazine as the content of its stories and enriched the conversation pieces with compelling photojournalism.
This sense of urgency, newness, invention and prestige all added to the allure and myth that was, and remains, New York. Felker now heads the magazine journalism program at the University of California at Berkeley that bears his name, leaving the magazine to its new owner Bruce Wasserstein.
“Bruce is a good guy,” Felker said. “The magazine is in good hands.”
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