Illustration by Barry Blitt.

The New Yorker is launching a new design of website and archive today and we present new manifesto from the editors!

by The Editors

In February, it will be ninety years since Harold Ross founded The New Yorker. It’s amazing what fruits of his invention persist from that first issue until today: The Talk of the Town, Goings On, and Profiles—a one-pager on Giulio Gatti-Casazza, the impresario of the Metropolitan Opera. (Other departments—Say It with Scandal, Of All Things, and the high-society notes of In Our Midst—were more short-lived.) A chain-smoking, ulcer-inflicting worrier and genius, Ross did not ignore the details. As he wrote to a colleague, “I am forced to acknowledge that we carried an ad for a belching preventative two or three weeks ago, but that was because the advertising manager was asleep.”

And yet, for all his eagle-eyed attention, Ross could not have anticipated all the ways in which his inky corner of the world would change. He and his contemporaries relied solely on paper and the U.S. mail for reproduction and distribution. Since 2001, however, The New Yorker has also meant newyorker.com, a Web site, which has grown immensely, in audience and in substance, particularly in the past few years. And there is now more change on the digital front—in appearance, content, and access.