Adam Moss was named editor in chief of New York in March 2004. During his tenure, he was responsible for the revitalization of the now 50-year-old print magazine, the relaunch of nymag.com and the creation of five highly successful digital publications, The Cut, Grub Street, Intelligencer, The Strategist and Vulture. Moss also increased political and business coverage, introduced the much-lauded “Culture Pages” and “Strategist” sections and emphasized visual and multimedia storytelling. Writers he brought to the magazine included Frank Rich, Rebecca Traister, Andrew Sullivan and Jonathan Chait as well as the Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture and music critic Justin Davidson and the Pulitzer Prize- and National Magazine Award-winning art critic Jerry Saltz.
Under Moss’ leadership, New York won 40 National Magazine Awards, including the 2013 award for Magazine of the Year, six awards for General Excellence in print and seven for overall excellence for nymag.com. In addition, the magazine won the Society of Publication Designers’ award for Magazine of the Year and the American Society of Magazine Editors’ award for Cover of the Year three times each. In 2017, Advertising Age named New York magazine of the year and Moss editor of the year, an honor he also received in 2001 and 2007. In 2016, Adweek named Moss editor of the year and New York magazine of the year. In 2005, Moss was awarded an honorary doctor of humanities degree from his alma mater, Oberlin College, and in 2012 the Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism.
Before joining New York, Moss was the editor of The New York Times Magazine and assistant managing editor of the newspaper, overseeing The New York Times Book Review and style and culture coverage as well as the magazine. Moss was the founding editor of 7 Days, a New York weekly magazine, which won the National Magazine Award for General Excellence in its circulation class in 1990. Before that, he worked at Esquire in a variety of positions, including those of managing editor and deputy editor. Earlier he worked at Rolling Stone.
In January 2019, Moss announced that he would step down as editor in chief of New York at the end of March. “There are many reasons,” he told his staff, “but they pretty much boil down to this: editors ought to have term-limits. Experience is good, but after a while every institution needs a blood transfusion. . . . I want to see what else I can do.”