File this one under highbrow, despicable.
New York Magazine is going from a weekly to an every-other-week publishing schedule, the New York Times reported Sunday night.
Thanks to a print environment that is working out for virtually no one, the nearly 50-year-old publication had already been down to 42 publishing weeks per year, but will now be winnowed to 26. It keeps its three annual staple special issues — best doctors, gift guide and food-and-drink — so in the final tally it really only loses 13 issues.
Also read: 5 Takeaways from New York Magazine’s Profile of the New York Times
The print edition will undergo a style makeover along with its diet; New York editor-in-chief Adam Moss showed off new cover concepts and other redesigns at a conference room last week, Times reporter David Carr wrote, in a manner indicating he was sitting in on the meeting.
(Interesting why? Because New York Magazine recently profiled the Times, and Carr was the only staffer on the record.)
“We’ve talked about this for a while and you can’t help but get wistful about it,” Moss told assembled staff, the Times reported. “But I would be more concerned if we didn’t address how the market and people’s reading habits have changed. I would not be doing this if I didn’t believe we could make a better magazine and continue to grow what we do both in print and online.”
OK, so maybe getting less of NYM’s “approval matrix” will somehow be highbrow, brilliant. Who are we to judge?