AP Photo/Todd Plitt
Clay Felker

Clay Felker

Founding editor of New York magazine dies at 82

Clay Felker, the magazine mogul who revolutionized the city magazine genre in the U.S. as founding editor of New York, died Tuesday. He was 82.

Felker died Tuesday morning at his New York City home after a battle with throat cancer, a magazine spokeswoman said.

New York magazine, filled with gossip on the city's social scene, inside knowledge of its business and politics, and endless "best of" lists, was relentlessly imitated following its creation in 1968.

Editors across the country adopted Felker's formula _ co-founder Milton Glaser's bold layout designs and the equally non-traditional "new journalism" writing style of contributors like Tom Wolfe.

"I used to compare it to what the conversation is at a round dinner table or a dinner party that well-informed people talk about," Felker told The New York Times in 1995. "That talk about real estate, that talk about business, that talk about personal gossip, you know, what new play or movie, culture, you know, this potpourri."

Felker's editing at New York fostered the careers of such influential writers as Ken Auletta, Jimmy Breslin, Gloria Steinem and Gael Greene.

Among New York's most influential features were Wolfe's "Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny's," on the Black Panthers benefit party thrown by conductor Leonard Bernstein in 1970, and Nik Cohn's "Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night," which served as the basis for the film "Saturday Night Fever."

Felker published, edited and wrote for dozens of publications including Life, Time, Esquire, the Village Voice, Adweek, Daily News Today, Manhattan Inc. and U.S. News and World Report.