Today we picked up our copy of the Sunday New York Times as usual (that’s right, we still like paper), and as promised, out fell the new redesign of The New York Times Magazine, a change they had announced last week. In the issue’s Editor’s Letter, Editor in Chief Hugo Lindgren explains, “Every tiny aspect of the redesign represents a decision we debated, sweated over and second-guessed until we ran out of time and had to send it off to the printer. But what you see here is not a new formula. It’s a beginning. Our aim is to make everything sharper, clearer, more alive and dynamic — while not altering the foundation of the magazine.” It’s true that the redesign has many nods to the future and stylistic changes while maintaining its focus on long-form journalism, but is it better? Click through for our thoughts and share your own!
The first change is just a mostly irrelevant (to us) shift of the logo/title to the left. Lindgren informs us that it has been enlarged by 20%, but without an old copy in front of us, we probably wouldn’t have noticed. The inaugural cover story for the redesign, however, is a good one – Jennifer Egan wrote one of the best books in recent memory, and she is also a seriously hip writer to like, so that’s a plus. And the topic, the story of American Lori Berenson’s life told after her release from a 15 year stint in Peruvian jail, is also compelling, and dare we say – also hip. Young people will read it.
Next, we noticed what is arguably the most discussed new feature – the fact that features editors are credited for the stories they worked on, and their email addresses are given, along with the authors’. Though we can’t say that in all our freelance work we haven’t wished to publicly blame an editor for the way something came out, we kind of agree with the Slate piece calling it pointless, especially when the editors all have obviously special email addresses for this purpose (we love that Jennifer Egan has a hotmail.com address, though). But for Lindgren, it’s a “symbolic” move. As he told Adweek, “We want to show readers—we like to hear from them, we want to get feedback—that we’re not inaccessible… People have to do some work to figure out how to contact people, and I don’t think that’s necessarily a good thing. The whole notion of what we’re trying to do is make the relationship between the readers and people who produce the magazine… part of an exchange.” Okay, we like exchange. But there’s transparency, and then there’s transparency. You want to talk? Give us your cell phone number.
There was a lot of hubbub last week when several columnists surprised readers with ‘goodbye’ missives, though these changes have been obviously smoothed over in official language from Lindgren. Randy Cohen, writer of The Ethicist section, will be replaced by Ariel Kaminer, the Times City Critic. The wonderful On Language column is no more, and The Medium ends with an understated “Thanks for Reading”. Deborah Solomon was replaced by Jodi Rudoren, and even the ever-charming Recipe Redux got the axe. Eesh. As far as the replacements go, who knows what that was about, but we really loved On Language. Mistake!
However, there are additions as well, to make up for all the firings. The have revived an old feature called What They Were Thinking which we have to admit is pretty great (at least this week). There’s a new photo section entitled Look and a “critic’s page” called Riff, and yet another section called You Are Here, which will feature thoughts from writers in faraway lands. Bill Keller, the NYT executive editor, will have a regular column. The magazine also has a new blog, which looks promising.
Now, on to more important things, like the font, which is bigger, bolder, and all in caps – well, the story headlines are, anyway. Stylistically, the magazine has retained its signature black bars, and though the Table of Contents is a little more exciting and GQ-ish than it has been in the past, they’re not going too crazy. We are, however, taken in by the many pull quotes peppered around the front pages. Without too much context, the phrases “virtual orgy of never-ending literary communion” and “here’s your giant goodie bag of festering misery” are always going to be fascinating. Good job.
What do you think of the redesign? Let us know in the comments!
Comments (12)
Sorry I know this article ain’t anything to do w/ the story of Lori Berenson, but you should change the word “American Activist” to “Terrorist”. This woman collaborate w/ various murders of innocent people, blowing up departments buildings, just so their terrorist group, would gain the power of the Peruvian Government.
So you should really choose your words wisely.
@Lucia: You’re right, this article isn’t about that, so no need for controversy. Updated to just ‘American’.
I like the redesign. I was skeptical, but it’s fresher and I hadn’t realized until I read the new one, how stagnant the old one had become.
Not a fan. Not because I’m a stodgy old Times reader who hates change but because, like the Oscars last weekend, it’s blatant pandering the youth market (or basically, anyone who reads the internet) but misses the mark. Hugo Lindgren mentions something about “intensifying the print experience” in this age of competition from the ‘net. Which basically means goofy things like calling the Letters section “Reply All 2.28.11 version” or something equally silly. There’s a whole page devoted to “Last Month on The Internet”–which is basically an eternity in terms of the Internet but also, that same kind of abdicating of journalistic duties that Jon Stewart is always hitting the cable news channels for–re-playing you tube videos, etc. This kind of stuff makes it feel like it’s real target market is old people who have no idea what’s going on on the web.
It basically serves to remind us that we might as well just read this whole thing on the web. Most of the articles have been up on the web version since earlier in the week, anyway. All the mentions of the web, make me think “Hey if I read this on the web, this reference would be hyperlinked, or I could watch the video they mention.”
What I don’t get is the hodgepodge of bits and pieces of god knows what, as if the editors are striving to be graphically hip, coupled with the Berenson article, an 8,300 word meandering, burbling interview that could have been pulled off and made eminently more readable in one thousand wordss. Among those 8,300 words we get a great deal of Berenson, who comes across as self-absorbed, marginally remorseful, and unaware of what she got herself into. She still doesn’t understand that if the revolutionary group she threw in with, the MRTA, had succeeded in overthrowing the Peruvian goverment, it would have imposed a totalitarian government not unlike that in Cuba where people like her would have been jailed or shot,
Jennifer Egan, the interviewer, seemed more interested in displaying her novelist chops. Also, very little Peruvian perspective. Go on the Peruvian newspaper sites via newsgoogle for a sampling of the very pungent Peruvian take on the interview.
Dan
I love the new design, the varied contents, and most of all the new *tone* of the magazine. Bravo. Great articles, superb photos, great graphics. Some fonts a tad tight for my 67 year old eyes, but hey. I was very attached (am no longer!) to the “old” NYTM and looked forward to Sundays, reading the magazine after the paper like a yummy desert I’d take hours to finish. I’m very much looking forward to next Sunday — onwards!
“What They Were Thinking” was a classic inexplicably cut by the Times years ago in a previous fit of “improvements.” Those of us who mourned its demise and prayed for its return just want to pat the old (grey) lady on the back and say good job.
I like the return of “What They Were Thinking” but am at least mildly appalled by the rest of the changes and by Hugo Lindgren’s condescending and content-free editor’s note. What does “intensify the experience of reading print in a digital age” mean? The new columns seem like the most banal of the outtakes of the old. It doesn’t seem to me that they’re making a particularly good ploy for the youth market, if that’s what they’re aiming for. It will take more than a few lame mentions of Justin Bieber to bring *that* off, and in my view, it’s not a worthy goal anyway. They got rid of some of the best minds in journalism when they canned their old freelancers. I used to look forward to actually *learning* something when I opened the Sunday NYT Mag. May this new editor have the briefest of tenures . . . .
Tropicana.
[...] it would appear that the New York Times magazine isn’t the only iconic American institution undergoing a makeover. McDonald’s is changing [...]
The Times magazines make over is very representative of the New York neighborhoods it claims to represent. Once hard working and gritty, obsessed with local politics and school board elections, now a collection of overpriced, silly patisseries selling amuse bouche’s to entitled private schooler’s in a manicured landscape devoid of ethnicity .
I loved On Language too – was sad to see it go!
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