6. The 21st-Century New Yorker

The internet changed everything. 

As it entered the 21st century, The New Yorker, like many other publications, grappled with concerns about identity and survival in an online world. In 1998, staff writer David Remnick was named the magazine’s new editor. Under his leadership, The New Yorker confronted the urgent new questions of the era head-on. How would the magazine provide access to its stories online, and how would it monetize them? What would become of The New Yorker print issue? Would its longstanding commitment to well-researched and nuanced journalism survive? 

The digital revolution didn’t just transform the media industry; it reshaped the very fabric of society. Over the past two decades, The New Yorker has published landmark stories, along with bold cover art, on power and politics in the internet age, including an exposé of American military abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the role of dark money in elections. In both fiction and fact pieces, it has covered the transformative #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements. The magazine has also reckoned with its own questions of equity and sought to diversify its staff and contributors. 

As it enters its second century, the magazine continues to approach its mission in a quintessentially New Yorker way: thoughtfully, deliberately, and in dialogue with the magazine’s rich intellectual legacy.