In partnership with The Verge, New York Magazine’s January 16–29 cover story is an inside look at the first three months of Twitter under Elon Musk by Zoë Schiffer, Casey Newton, and The Verge deputy editor Alex Heath — each of whom has been breaking scoops left and right since the Musk takeover. Supported by interviews with more than two dozen current and former Twitter staffers, the feature delves into how Musk has ushered in a new era for the platform, beginning with purging thousands of employees, passing policies that align with his own definition of “free speech,” and pissing off even his most loyal supporters.
“It’s been a blast to bring together Zoë, Casey, and Alex — three reporters who’ve been heavily sourced inside Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover since the beginning,” says Kevin Nguyen, the Verge features editor who, along with New York features director Genevieve Smith, helped spearhead the partnership. “Combining The Verge’s inside access to Silicon Valley’s giants with New York’s ambitious reporting allowed us to report this as a classic magazine story — one that gives shape to how employees have been treated in absurd (and sometimes harrowing) ways, how a vital social platform is being gutted, and how one man’s ego is at the front of it all.”
“After months being glued to the slow drip of news out of Twitter, it’s thrilling to get a fly-on-the-wall view of what it’s been like to live through the Musk takeover from the inside,” says features director Genevieve Smith.
The cover was designed by New York’s design director Thomas Alberty.
Elsewhere in the issue, New York features writer Andrew Rice dives into how James O’Keefe, the infamous king of the conservative sting operation, might finally be brought down by his efforts to expose Ashley Biden’s stolen diary.
You can subscribe here to Alex Heath’s new paid newsletter for The Verge, Command Line, where he covers the product and business strategies of the most consequential tech companies and the people driving them. Casey Newton is the founder and editor of Platformer, a daily newsletter about Big Tech and democracy. Zoë Schiffer is the managing editor of Platformer. Subscribe here.