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.