The New Yorker


The New Yorker's first cover, which is reprinted each year on the magazine's anniversary. The image comes from the 2004 cover. The New Yorker is a weekly American magazine (debuted on February 21, 1925), well known for popularizing the nearly plotless short story as a literary form in English in the mid-20th century. The magazine also is known for its journalism—John Hersey's Hiroshima filled an entire issue—and for its criticism and essays, particularly the short "Talk of the Town" pieces. Its cartoons and short humorous sketches are also quite well known. Its longer pieces are known for having a rambling style that pays close attention to characters. Because of its quality and reputation, The New Yorker has a wide audience outside of the city of New York. For the first, occasionally precarious, years of its existence, it prided itself on its cosmopolitan sophistication that was "Not for the little old lady from Dubuque." It was founded by Harold Ross (editor 1925-1951), who wanted a sophisticated humor magazine—in contrast to the corniness of other humor publications such as Judge, which he had worked for, or Life. Ross partnered with entrepreneur Raoul Fleishmann to establish the F-R Publishing Company and established the magazine's first offices at 25 West Forty-fifth Street in Manhattan. Ross would continue to edit the magazine until his death in 1951. The magazine's politics are largely liberal, though historically this has a large effect only on the magazine's editorial pieces; much of the journalism it publishes contains little if any political bias, and pieces by prominent conservatives are regularly printed. Some critics claim this changed during the 2004 U.S. presidential campaign suggesting that reporting by correspondent Philip Gourevitch and other staff members displayed a strong bias in favor of Democratic nominee Senator John Kerry. In its November 1, 2004 issue, the magazine broke with 80 years of precedent and issued a formal endorsement of Kerry in an unsigned lead editorial. The New Yorker is also famous for its cartoons, which have a reputation for being slightly bourgeois, surreal and often inscrutable. One popular stereotype is that the cartoons have punchlines so non sequitur that they are impossible to "get". (This stereotype once inspired an episode of the sitcom Seinfeld.) However, the cartoons remain quite popular, implying that there is a substantial constituency of readers who enjoy them and find them funny. In addition, certain contemporary New Yorker cartoonists such as Roz Chast break this mold, using humor that almost any reader would find accessible. The magazine's first cover, of a dandy peering at a butterfly through a monocle, was drawn by Rea Irvin, who also designed the font the magazine uses for its nameplate and headlines. The character, which became the magazine's mascot, was named "Eustace Tilley" by Corey Ford. Example of former semicolon usage from issue of October 27, 1980. On the third line, the semicolon after "cormorants" appears before the closing quotation mark. One unusual feature of the magazine's typesetting is the placement of diaeresis marks in words with repeating vowels—such as reëlected and coöperate—in which the two vowel letters indicate different vowel sounds. The magazine does not put titles of plays or books in italics, but simply sets them off with quotation marks. Formerly, when a word or phrase in quotation marks came at the end of a phrase or clause that ended with a semicolon, the semicolon would be put before the trailing quotation mark; now, however, the magazine follows the usual American punctuation style and puts the semicolon after the second quotation mark. The editor of The New Yorker is David Remnick. Previous editors, in addition to Ross, have been William Shawn (1951-1987), Robert Gottlieb (1987-1992) and Tina Brown (1992-1998). It was acquired by Advance Publications in 1985, the media company owned by S.I. Newhouse. A New Yorker look-alike called Novy Ochevidets (The New Eyewitness) was launched in Russia in 2004. It folded in January 2005 after five months of circulation.

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