Today, New York Magazine’s editor-in-chief David Haskell announced that Genevieve Smith has been promoted to executive editor, and Gazelle Emami has been promoted to editorial director. Haskell shared the news via a note to staff:
Hi everybody,
I’m very happy to share the news that two of our colleagues, Genevieve Smith and Gazelle Emami, have been promoted into expanded roles.
Genevieve has, since April 2019, served as Features Director, overseeing the publication of hundreds of outstanding enterprise stories during that time. She leads a team of the best longform editors and writers around. Just as impressively, Genevieve has remade what was once a print-only division into something that spans across every expression of this digital, multimedia magazine. Recently, she has spearheaded other high-priority magazine projects (for instance, working closely with Lindsay Peoples and Jen Ortiz to bring Esther Perel into our fold in the most elegant and editorially ambitious way possible), and she now works closely with many editors across the verticals, along with the Art and Photography teams, to support and strategize on their their longer-lead projects. Genevieve will now have the title of Executive Editor, which I believe better recognizes her crucial leadership role and responsibilities, and sets her up for leading more magazine-wide initiatives in the future.
Gazelle has served as Culture Editor since June 2020, and the work that she has shepherded into the world, not only in the excellent Culture Pages but also the special culture issues and other feature-length culture profiles, has been some of the sharpest culture journalism this magazine has ever published. She, too, has recently taken on projects that span beyond her original mandate—for instance, editing Lila Shapiro’s intimate profile of Machaela Cavanaugh, and taking an active role in shaping the magazine’s coverage of the Middle East last week—and this hints at the room she will have going forward, as she will now be the magazine’s Editorial Director. I already rely on Gazelle for her wisdom and guidance on all sorts of magazine leadership decisions, and this new role carves out space for more of that, as well as editing writers, stories and projects outside of culture, and providing top-editing support and guidance for editors across the site. We will be opening the role of Culture Editor shortly, and this person will, under Gazelle’s guidance, lead the making of the Culture Pages and the magazine’s special culture issues.
Please join me in congratulating Genevieve and Gazelle, two extraordinary magazine editors whose expanded purviews will be, I’m sure, felt across our journalism in all sorts of exciting ways.
David