When the Herald Tribune merged with the New York World Telegram & Sun and the New York Journal American in 1966 to become the New York World Journal Tribune, Felker was appointed the paper's associate editor, overseeing its Sunday literary supplement while continuing as editor of the Sunday magazine.
After the World Journal Tribune folded in 1967, Felker acquired the magazine name New York for $6,575, lined up financial backers and relaunched New York as an independent magazine in 1968 -- with Wolfe, Breslin and other Herald Tribune vets joining him and innovative graphic designer Milton Glaser.
Targeting his new publication at educated and affluent or upwardly mobile New Yorkers, Felker stated that his mission was to produce a "weekly magazine that communicates the spirit and character of New York."
New York's hip and sophisticated blend of stories focusing on the city's culture, politics, business, and life and style -- along with its eye-catching illustrations -- spawned countless imitative city and regional magazines around the country.
"I call it an eternal magazine formula," Felker told the New York Times in 1995. "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."
Always, the emphasis was on good writing. And Felker, widely regarded as a "writer's editor," attracted many of the era's best, including Sheehy, Pete Hamill, Nora Ephron, Peter Maas and Aaron Latham.
As an editor, Felker recalled in the 1995 interview, "I had been experimenting along with several other editors in town with something that was then called the New Journalism and is now called Literary Journalism.
"These were people who could do that, using the traditional techniques of English literature in a different form -- which I have always felt communicates not only the facts but the emotions. And these people were those who connected emotionally with our particular kind of audience."
During his tenure at New York, Felker helped launch Steinem's feminist magazine Ms. by inserting a 30-page preview excerpt in a December 1971 issue of New York and funding the new magazine's first stand-alone issue.
In 1974, New York magazine's parent company bought the Village Voice, the Greenwich Village weekly newspaper, and Felker eventually named himself its editor-in-chief and publisher.
