This week, we’re introducing two elements to the magazine. At the end of the “Culture” pages, you’ll find “Agenda.” The page opens the section formerly called “The Week,” which has now been renamed … “Agenda.” That’s also what we call our daily entertainment e-newsletter and the comprehensive listings of events that live on nymag.com. Like its online siblings, the print “Agenda” calls out in no uncertain terms the events that merit extra attention in the coming week. Our launch edition, for example, includes Philip Glass’s first performance of Einstein on the Beach in fifteen years, a new album from the Wu-Tang Clan’s Ghostface Killah, and what to see on Broadway immediately, now that the strike is over. The page not only knits the magazine and the Website closer but also gives you something to tear out and stuff into your pocket when you’re in a quandary about what to do on, say, a Tuesday or Friday night. It’s a commonplace that there’s too much to see, do, and experience in New York. Borrowing from the wisdom of our esteemed critics, “Agenda” makes the process of choosing simpler.
Our new back page, “Artifact,” by contrast, is pure observation, a moment grabbed and preserved. “Artifact” is where we’ll put shards of random and illuminating data—sometimes literally (like this week) and sometimes figuratively—that give us a picture, like cave drawings, of one aspect of the city’s daily life right now. We’re starting with a map of foreclosures; next week, it might be a local politician’s stump speech, complete with last-minute jottings, or a telling paragraph from a fractious lawsuit, or a sign in a deli window. And by the way, crossword-puzzle fans, don’t freak; your weekly addiction has just been moved two pages forward.