The New York Times Magazine

The magazine's June 8, 2008, cover
Editor	Jake Silverstein[1]
Categories	Newspaper supplement
Frequency	Weekly
Circulation	1,623,697 per week[2] (as part of Sunday paper)
Publisher	A. G. Sulzberger
First issue	September 6, 1896; 129 years ago (1896-09-06)
Company	The New York Times Company
Country	United States
Language	English
Website	nytimes.com/magazine
ISSN	0028-7822

The New York Times Magazine is an AmericanSunday magazine included with the Sunday edition ofThe New York Times. It features articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted many notable contributors. The magazine is noted for its photography, especially relating to fashion and style.

Its first issue was published on September 6, 1896, and contained the first photographs ever printed in the newspaper.^[3] In the early decades, it was a section of thebroadsheet paper and not an insert as it is today. The creation of a "serious" Sunday magazine was part of a massive overhaul of the newspaper instigated that year by its new owner,Adolph Ochs, who also bannedfiction,comic strips, andgossip columns from the paper, and is generally credited with savingThe New York Times from financial ruin.^[4]

In 1897, the magazine published a 16-page spread of photographs documentingQueen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, a "costly feat" that resulted in a wildly popular issue and helped boost the magazine to success.^[5]

In its early years,The New York Times Magazine began a tradition of publishing the writing of well-known contributors, fromW. E. B. Du Bois andAlbert Einstein to numerous sitting and futureU.S. presidents.^[5] EditorLester Markel, an "intense andautocratic" journalist who oversaw the SundayTimes from the 1920s through the 1950s, encouraged the idea of the magazine as a forum for ideas.^[5] During his tenure, writers such asLeo Tolstoy,Thomas Mann,Gertrude Stein, andTennessee Williams contributed pieces to the magazine. When, in 1970,The New York Times introduced its firstop-ed page, the magazine shifted away from publishing as many editorial pieces.^[5]

In 1979, the magazine began publishingPulitzer Prize–winning journalistWilliam Safire's "On Language", a column discussing issues of English grammar, use andetymology. Safire's column steadily gained popularity and by 1990 was generating "more mail than anything else" in the magazine.^[6] In 1999, the magazine debuted "The Ethicist", anadvice column written by humoristRandy Cohen that quickly became a highly contentious part of the magazine.

In 2004,The New York Times Magazine began publishing an entire supplement devoted to style. TitledT, the supplement is edited byDeborah Needleman and appears 14 times a year.In 2009, it launched a Qatari Edition as a standalone magazine.

In 2006, the magazine introduced two other supplements:PLAY, asports magazine published every other month, andKEY, a real estate magazine published twice a year.^[7]

In September 2010, as part of a greater effort to reinvigorate the magazine,Times editorBill Keller hired former staff member and then-editor ofBloomberg Businessweek,Hugo Lindgren, as the editor ofThe New York Times Magazine.^[8]

As part of a series of new staff hires upon assuming his new role, Lindgren first hired then–executive editor ofO, The Oprah MagazineLauren Kern to be his deputy editor^[9] 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.^[10] In December 2010, Lindgren hired Joel Lovell, formerly story editor atGQ magazine, as deputy editor.^[11]

In 2011, Kaminer replaced Cohen as the author of the column, and in 2012Chuck Klosterman replaced Kaminer. Klosterman left in early 2015 to be replaced by a trio of authors,Kenji Yoshino,Amy Bloom, andJack Shafer, who used a conversational format; Shafer was replaced three months later byKwame Anthony Appiah, who assumed sole authorship of the column in September 2015. "Consumed",Rob Walker's regular column on consumer culture, debuted in 2004. The SundayMagazine also features apuzzle page, edited byWill Shortz, that features acrossword puzzle with a larger grid than those featured in theTimes during the week, along with other types of puzzles on a rotating basis (includingdiagramless crossword puzzles andanacrostics).

In January 2012, humoristJohn Hodgman, who hosts his comedy court show podcastJudge John Hodgman, began writing a regular column "Judge John Hodgman Rules" (formerly "Ask Judge John Hodgman") for "The One-Page Magazine".^[12]

In 2014,Jake Silverstein, who had been editor-in-chief atTexas Monthly, replaced Lindgren as editor of the Sunday magazine.^[13]

Beginning in 2024 a condensed, edited version of an in-depth weekly interview is published by the magazine in parallel with thepodcast version of the interview. The podcast titledThe Interview is hosted byDavid Marchese andLulu Garcia-Navarro. Episodes typically last 40 to 50 minutes.^[14] Guests have included politicians, actors, influential experts, media figures and high-profile writers.

U.S. Poet LaureateNatasha Trethewey selects and introduces poems weekly, including from poetsTomas Tranströmer,Carlos Pintado, andGregory Pardlo.

The magazine features the Sunday version of the dailyNew York Times crossword puzzle. This larger Sunday crossword is an icon inAmerican culture; it is typically intended to be as difficult as a Thursday puzzle.^[15] Typically, the standard daily crossword is 15 by 15 squares, while the Sunday crossword measures 21 by 21 squares.^[16][17] The puzzles are edited by Will Shortz, the host of the on-air puzzle segment ofNPR'sWeekend Edition Sunday, introduced as "the puzzlemaster".

In the September 18, 2005, issue of the magazine, an editors' note announced the addition ofThe Funny Pages, a literary section of the magazine intended to "engage our readers in some ways we haven't yet tried—and to acknowledge that it takes many different types of writing to tell the story of our time".^[22] AlthoughThe Funny Pages is no longer published in the magazine, it was made up of three parts: the Strip (a multipartgraphic novel that spanned weeks), the Sunday Serial (agenre fictionserial novel that also spanned weeks), and True-Life Tales (a humorous personalessay, by a different author each week). On July 8, 2007, the magazine stopped printing True-Life Tales.

The section has been criticized for being unfunny, sometimes nonsensical, and excessivelyhighbrow; in a 2006 poll conducted byGawker.com asking, "Do you now find—or have you ever found—The Funny Pages funny?", 92% of 1824 voters answered "No".^[23]

Of the serial novels,At Risk,Limitations,The Overlook,Gentlemen of the Road, andThe Lemur have since been published in book form with added material.

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