The Editorial Choices That Shaped Culture: What 25 Magazine Covers Reveal About Pre-Algorithm Curation

The New York Times T Magazine convened five experts to debate the most influential magazine covers of all time. Read the full conversation here and see all nominations here.

The panel: Gayle King (Oprah Daily editor at large, CBS Mornings co-host), David Remnick (The New Yorker editor), Adam Moss (former editor of New York Magazine and The New York Times Magazine), artist Martha Rosler, and Patrick Li (T Magazine's creative director). They met in May 2025, spent hours arguing, and produced an unranked list of 25 covers spanning American magazines from 1916 to 2018.

What emerged wasn't nostalgia. It was a case study in how editorial curation functioned before algorithmic feeds.

What Made These Covers Matter
The panel couldn't agree on what "influential" meant. Some argued for aesthetic innovation (Erwin Blumenfeld's abstracted Vogue face, 1950). Others prioritized cultural impact (Ellen DeGeneres's Time coming-out cover, 1997). Still others valued editorial courage (Newsweek's "Women in Revolt," published the same day female staffers sued for discrimination, 1970).

The covers that made the final list combined visual craft with cultural timing: George Lois's Muhammad Ali as Saint Sebastian for Esquire (1968), shot weeks after Ali refused the Vietnam draft. National Lampoon's darkly satirical hostage dog (1973). The New Yorker's black-on-black 9/11 towers (2001). New York Magazine's 35 Cosby accusers (2015).

Each required someone to make choices about what audiences should see, how they should see it, and why it mattered.

The Personal Context
For those of us who grew up with magazine subscriptions, this wasn't abstract. Magazines were how you discovered things you didn't know to look for. Wired taught me technology as philosophy. Premiere showed me film as industry and art. The many I subscribed to became an education in visual storytelling and editorial voice.

The critical difference from today's feeds: you couldn't skip what didn't appeal to you. You confronted images and ideas you might not have chosen. That friction created unexpected discovery.

Why This Matters
The T Magazine conversation functions as a time capsule of pre-algorithmic media. Before personalization engines, before infinite scroll, magazines demonstrated that how you present an idea matters as much as the idea itself.

The panel debates what's actually lost. Not just a format, but a specific kind of cultural mediation. When editors made choices, they created shared reference points. When millions saw the same cover simultaneously, it became a cultural event in ways algorithmically distributed content rarely achieves.

The question isn't whether magazines will return in that form. They won't. The question is whether the principles behind great magazine covers (intention, craft, surprise, risk) remain relevant when everyone is both creator and curator.

They do. Smarter creativity means knowing what to amplify and what to resist.

How much is 'smarter' worth?

Seth Godin: 

Smarter about the process, about the effects, about planning. Smarter about leadership, about management, about measurement.

How much is smarter worth?

In my experience, smarter is almost always a bargain, something you can buy for a lot less than it's worth.

Australian Government Documentary Series: The House with Annabel Crabb

An unprecedented look at how the Australian government works.  One of the most interesting and well produced documentaries I've seen all year. 

The House With Annabel Crabb Episode 1 - Join Annabel Crabb on an all-access visit to Australia's Parliament House. As the 45th Parliament opens with a cast of apprehensive new MPs & an unpredictable Senate, Annabel takes us on a tour of the engine room.

The House With Annabel Crabb Episode 2 - Annabel explores the peculiar pitfalls of a workplace where all comes unstuck if 76 people can't successfully sprint to a designated point within 4 mins. She also reveals something unnerving about the coat of arms.

The House With Annabel Crabb Episode 3 - A behind-the-scenes look at just how much plotting, planning and rehearsal goes into the brutal piece of political performance theatre that is Question Time in the House of Representatives.

The House With Annabel Crabb Episode 4 - Annabel steps into the intoxicating world of the Senate, presided over by Senate President Stephen Parry (a former cop and undertaker) and his Clerk Rosemary Laing, an expert in 17th century British poetry.

The House With Annabel Crabb Episode 5 - Annabel inveigles her way into the building's Members-only dining room to hear a startling confession from former PM Tony Abbott. Plus a visiting dignitary, a look inside the Cabinet room & Nick Xenophon uncovers his plates.

The House With Annabel Crabb Episode 6 - The last week of Parliament arrives, full of Christmas parties & knotty legislative business which politicians have left to the last minute to fix. Security faces challenges as protesters infiltrate the building.

A Few Words About That Ten-Million-Dollar Serial Comma

The New Yorker's Culture Desk:

Nothing, but nothing—profanity, transgender pronouns, apostrophe abuse—excites the passion of grammar geeks more than the serial, or Oxford, comma. People love it or hate it, and they are equally ferocious on both sides of the debate. Individual publications have guidelines that sink deep into the psyches of editors and writers. The Times, like most newspapers, does without the serial comma. At The New Yorker, it is a copy editor’s duty to deploy the serial comma, along with lots of other lip-smacking bits of punctuation, as a bulwark against barbarianism.

While advocates of the serial comma are happy for the truck drivers’ victory, it was actually the lack of said comma that won the day. Here are the facts of the case, for those who may have been pinned under a semicolon. According to Maine state law, workers are not entitled to overtime pay for the following activities: “The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of: (1) Agricultural produce; (2) Meat and fish products; and (3) Perishable foods.”

The issue is that, without a comma after “shipment,” the “packing for shipment or distribution” is a single activity. Truck drivers do not pack food, either for shipment or for distribution; they drive trucks and deliver it. Therefore, these exemptions do not apply to drivers, and Oakhurst Dairy owes them some ten million dollars.

What's in a Brand Name?

James Surowiecki for The New Yorker: 

In October of 1955, a marketing researcher at Ford named Robert Young wrote the poet Marianne Moore a curious letter. Ford had designed a new car, which it hoped would revolutionize the industry, and it was struggling to find a good name. Young said that the options his division had come up with were “characterized by an embarrassing pedestrianism.” Perhaps a poet could devise something to convey, “through association or other conjuration, some visceral feeling of elegance, fleetness, advanced features and design.” In the following months, Moore sent Ford a long list of suggestions that were anything but pedestrian: Intelligent Bullet, Ford Fabergé, Mongoose Civique, Bullet Cloisoné, Utopian Turtletop. Ford, unsurprisingly, didn’t go for any of them. Instead, after considering more than six thousand names, it settled on one that has since become a byword for failure: Edsel.

Still, in going to such lengths to find a great name, Ford was ahead of the curve. Corporate branding is now big business, and companies routinely spend tens of millions of dollars rebranding themselves or coming up with names for new products. And good monikers are still defined by Young’s precept that a name should somehow evoke the fundamental qualities that you hope to advertise. If only Tribune Publishing—the media company that owns the Los Angeles Timesand the Chicago Tribune—had followed this simple rule. Earlier this year, Tribune announced that it was reinventing itself as a “content curation and monetization company focused on creating and distributing premium, verified content” (whatever that means) and giving itself a new name: Tronc. The name, which stands for Tribune Online Content, was ridiculed at the time and hasn’t done the company any favors since. Tronc has spent most of the year in talks about being bought by Gannett for more than half a billion dollars. Last week, the deal fell through, because of a lack of financing. After all, just imagine asking bankers for half a billion to buy something called Tronc.