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The New York Times Magazine is a supplement to the Sunday The New York Times newspaper. Its first issue was published on September 6, 1896, and contained the first photographs ever printed in the newspaper.[1] The creation of a "serious" Sunday magazine was part of a massive overhaul to the newspaper instigated that year by its new owner, Adolph Ochs, who also banned fiction, comic strips, and gossip columns from the paper and is generally credited with saving The New York Times from financial ruin.[2] In mid-1897, the magazine published a 16-page spread of photographs documenting Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, a "costly feat" that resulted in a wildly popular issue and helped boost the magazine to success.[3]
In its early years, The New York Times Magazine began a tradition of publishing the writing of well-known contributors, from W. E. B. Du Bois and Albert Einstein to numerous sitting and future U.S. Presidents.[3] Editor Lester Markel, an "intense and autocratic" journalist who oversaw the Sunday Times from the 1920s through the 1950s, encouraged the idea of the magazine as a forum for ideas.[3] During his tenure, writers like Count Leo Tolstoy, Thomas Mann, Gertrude Stein, and Tennessee Williams contributed pieces to the magazine. When, in 1970, The New York Times introduced its first Op-Ed page, the magazine shifted away from publishing as many editorial pieces.[3]
In 1979, the magazine began publishing Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist William Safire's "On Language," a column discussing issues of English grammar, use and etymology. Safire's column steadily gained popularity and by 1990 was generating "more mail than anything else" in the magazine.[4] 1999 saw the debut of "The Ethicist," an advice column written by humorist Randy Cohen that quickly became a highly contentious part of the magazine.[5][6]
Today, The New York Times Magazine is host to many longer feature articles than are typically included in the newspaper, and continues to attract notable contributors. The magazine is also renowned for its glamorous photography, especially relating to fashion and style. In 2004, The New York Times Magazine began publishing an entire supplement devoted to style. Titled "T", the supplement is edited by Stefano Tonchi and appears 14 times a year. In Fall 2006, the magazine introduced two other supplements, "PLAY", a sports magazine published every other month, and "KEY", a real estate magazine published twice a year..[7]
In the September 18, 2005 issue of The New York Times Magazine, an editors' note announced the addition of The Funny Pages, a literary section of the magazine intended to "engage our readers in some ways we haven't yet tried--and to acknowledge that it takes many different types of writing to tell the story of our time."[8] The Funny Pages is made up of three parts: the Strip (a multipart graphic novel that spans weeks), the Sunday Serial (a genre fiction serial novel that also spans weeks), and True-Life Tales (a humorous personal essay, by a different author each week.)
The section has been criticized for being unfunny and excessively highbrow; in a 2006 poll conducted by Gawker.com asking, "Do you now find—or have you ever found—The Funny Pages funny?", 92% of 1824 voters answered "No."[9]
Of the serial novels, At Risk, Limitations, and The Overlook have since been published in book form with added material. Gentlemen of the Road will follow suit on November 6, 2007.[10]