Clay Felker, magazine mogul, dies at 82

Washington, July 2 Clay Felker, a visionary editor who was widely credited with inventing the formula for the modern magazine, giving it energetic expression in a glossy weekly named for and devoted to the boisterous city that fascinated him — New York — died on Tuesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 82.

His death was of natural causes, said his wife, the author Gail Sheehy. He had throat cancer in his later years.

Felker edited a number of publications besides New York magazine. There were stints at Esquire, The Village Voice, Adweek and others. He also created an opposite-coast counterpart to New York and called it New West.

But it was at New York that he left his biggest imprint on American journalism. He had edited the magazine when it was a Sunday supplement to The New York Herald Tribune founded in 1964. Four years later, after the newspaper had closed, Felker and the graphic designer Milton Glaser reintroduced New York as a glossy, standalone magazine.

New York’s mission was to compete for consumer attention at a time when television threatened to overwhelm print publications. To do that, Felker came up with a distinctive format: a combination of long narrative articles and short, witty ones on consumer services. He embraced the New Journalism of the late ‘60s: the use of novelistic techniques to give reporting new layers of emotional depth. And he adopted a tone that was unapologetically elitist, indefatigably trendy and proudly provincial, in a sophisticated, Manhattan-centric sort of way. The headlines were bold, the graphics even bolder.

The look and attitude captured the attention of the city and influenced editors and designers for years to come. Dozens of city magazines modeling themselves after New York sprang up around the country.

Felker’s magazine was hip and ardent, civic-minded and skeptical. It was preoccupied with the foibles of the rich and powerful, the fecklessness of Government and the high jinks of wiseguys. But it never lost sight of the complicated business and cultural life of the city. Articles were often gossipy, even vicious, and some took liberties with sources and journalistic techniques.

Tom Wolfe, Jimmy Breslin, Gloria Steinem and others in Felker’s stable of star writers helped give the magazine national prominence. Meanwhile, what he called its “secret weapon”, its service coverag— on where to eat, shop, drink and li—e ¿ kept many readers coming back.

Felker eventually lost New York magazine to Rupert Murdoch in a...

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Clay Felker, magazine mogul, dies at 82

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