New York Magazine’s March 13–26 cover story is a photo portfolio and essay drawing on interviews with 17 women television journalists who reflect on Barbara Walters’s legacy and the world she helped make. In conversation with features writer Irin Carmon, who delves into Walters’s impact, the high-profile newswomen share stories about the Barbara they knew and are candid about the challenges they’ve faced, and continue to face, in the industry.
“We wanted to go beyond the gauzy obituaries and better understand a complex woman,” says Carmon. “And we wanted to hear about how the end of an era had these women thinking about their own paths.”
The cover is two contact strips of Walters photos from a 1996 shoot by Brigitte Lacombe. All the women in the photo portfolio were also photographed by Lacombe. “The set was somewhere between gossipy funeral reception and family reunion,” says Carmon.
Interviewed and pictured in the series are Christiane Amanpour, Margaret Brennan, Erin Burnett, Connie Chung, Katie Couric, Tamron Hall, Gayle King, Lisa Ling, Cynthia McFadden, Amna Nawaz, Deborah Norville, Soledad O’Brien, Norah O’Donnell, Jane Pauley, Joy Reid, Deborah Roberts, and Clarissa Ward.
Elsewhere in the issue is a feature by Paul Murray, who takes a tour through the metaverse, searching for friends in Mark Zuckerberg’s deserted city, and a story by features writer Lisa Miller on what a generation of boys has found in Andrew Tate’s extreme theory on masculinity.
Also in the issue is a continuation of New York’s annual spring tradition of publishing a slew of new “Best of New York” recommendations.