Legendary New York Editor Dead at 82

Clay Felker, founder and editor of New York magazine, died today at 82. Felker was the pioneer of a distinctive format that has become the model for weekly magazines: long, novelistic features alongside short, spicy service pieces. "Clay was obsessed with power, and he invented a magazine in the image of that obsession," current New York editor Adam Moss told the New York Times.

At New York, Felker attracted a stable of feature writers, among them Tom Wolfe, Jimmy Breslin, and Gloria Steinem, who helped raise the magazine's national profile and introduce New Journalism, an approach Felker once said "communicates not only the facts but the emotions." His era at New York ended in 1977 when Rupert Murdoch bought the magazine, but his influence endures there and throughout magazine journalism. (More New York stories.)