New York Mag’s New Editor Already Making Staff Changes
Adam Moss has officially been out of New York Magazine since Sunday, and already his successor is changing up the masthead.
David Haskell, tapped to take over after Moss’ lauded 15-year run as editor in chief, has made two promotions in his first days in the role. Noreen Malone is now editorial director, moving up from her five years as the magazine’s features editor, and Genevieve Smith is becoming features director after about seven years as a senior editor. Marisa Carol joined New York late last month as the new features editor, coming over from BuzzFeed News.
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In her new position, Malone will assist Haskell as he brings his own vision to New York in print and online, while “paying special attention to cultivating writers and editors across the organization,” according to a statement issued by the magazine. Meanwhile, Smith will work with Haskell and other editorial leaders on individual story ideas.
Haskell, who has spent nearly his entire editorial career at New York, wrote in a memo that Malone “has mastered the art of magazine feature writing.” Some of her notable editing work includes Rebecca Traister’s reporting on Harvey Weinstein and the subsequent #MeToo movement, as well as being part of the team that developed the 2016 cover story on the many rape and sexual assault accusers of Bill Cosby.
“She is a true writer’s editor, sensitive and artful and creative without being too precious — and the writers she works with know it,” Haskell added.
As for Smith, the editor said her years at the magazine have shown “there is nothing Genevieve can’t do.” A 2015 feature she conceived and oversaw about a block in the Bed-Stuy neighborhood of Brooklyn won a National Magazine Award and Haskell noted some of her other work on the 2016 election, Facebook and even the current magazine cover feature on modern marriage.
“She has for a handful of years been a terrific features editor, but it is obvious to me that she also has that big-picture talent, or maybe it’s the X-ray vision, to look at a very complicated but promising mess of material and recognize how to make happen exactly what you want to make happen,” he said.
The past couple of months have been a time of general change at New York. Not long after Haskell, who had previously been an editor focused on business and strategy, was tapped to replace Moss, lead print editor Jared Hohlt left, as well. Hohlt was with New York for 18 years, longer than Moss, and was apparently passed over for the top job in favor of Haskell, who is set to continue pushing on with new revenue streams. At the end of March, Marisa Carroll also joined New York
Before so much turnover at the top of the masthead, staff at New York late last year launched a union effort, which management voluntarily recognized at the end of January. Nevertheless, New York went forward with a “restructuring” last month, resulting in layoffs of 5 percent of its staff. The magazine at the time said the move reflected “a need for new focus as we build our digital subscription business” and “an overdue integration of print and digital staffs.” Before that, New York rolled out a paywall for its popular online verticals, like The Cut and Intelligencer, which began as blogs under the New York umbrella and had always been supported by ads and affiliate links. They still are, but a new subscriber model is obviously an attempt to increase revenue.
This all came amid what were said to be fervent efforts by New York to find some additional financing. Last summer, chief executive officer Pamela Wasserstein was said to be open to taking on a minority stakeholder or selling the company outright. Although the company is said to have started off with a price on it of around $100 million, it dropped over the months and was most recently thought to be priced at around $70 million. The company is also said to be losing somewhere in the neighborhood of $12 million a year. But, according to a Wall Street Journal report last month, Wasserstein has taken the magazine off the market. Cue the layoffs and a new digital subscription model to try to stem the losses.
For more, see:
New York Magazine ‘Restructuring,’ Cuts Dozens of Staffers
New York Magazine Staffers Move to Unionize
New York Magazine Names New Editor in Chief
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