Politico | The New York Times
Texas Monthly Editor-in-Chief Jake Silverstein will edit The New York Times Magazine, Dylan Byers reported Friday.
The magazine will increase its headcount, Ravi Somaiya reports in the Times.
Here’s the memo to staffers, from Abramson and Baquet:
Colleagues,
We are pleased to announce that Jake Silverstein, editor-in-chief of Texas Monthly for the past six years, will become the next editor of The New York Times Sunday Magazine.
During Jake’s tenure, Texas Monthly has been known for its literary narratives and ambitious journalism. Under his leadership, the magazine received twelve National Magazine Award nominations and won four times, once for General Excellence, once for Public Interest, and twice for Feature Writing. One of those feature writing awards recognized a two-part series on a man wrongly accused of murder. Jake also knows the tasty pleasures of magazines; this week Texas Monthly was nominated for a National Magazine Award for a story on the 50 Best Barbecue Joints in the world.
This announcement is about more than a dynamic new leader. Jake’s appointment signals a rethinking of the Magazine. It will be more fully integrated in the newsroom and will play a significant role in the big news stories of the day. We will add staff, including some of our best writers and provocative voices. The Magazine will be redesigned, making it more beguiling, displaying more of the best riches of the Times. The traditional magazine forms will continue — narratives, deep profiles, investigative reporting, essays, photography — and others will be invented. We will also begin to engage readers in a more active, on-going dialogue through social media and other means.
Jake will work closely with Matt Purdy and others in the newsroom on determining the best ways to give readers consistently rich and powerful multi-media storytelling on a variety of platforms.
This builds on the Times leadership in storytelling, multimedia innovation, and the fine work the magazine and the paper have done over the years.
Before taking over Texas Monthly, Jake was a reporter for the Big Bend Sentinel in Marfa, Texas, a Fulbright Scholar, and a contributing editor for Harper’s. His own stories have appeared in Best American Travel Writing, and he is the author of a collection entitled “Nothing Happened And Then It Did: A Chronicle in Fact And Fiction.”
-Jill and Dean
