The Newsmakers

In the chaos of fake news and consummate virality, the New York media world is witnessing another change. In the recent past, three women of Indian origin have been appointed editors-in-chief of both legacy and new-age publications. Meet the bosses heralding an era of diversity and inclusivity.

- Shahnaz Siganporia

IN GOOD TIME

As editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair, Radhika Jones is the latest arbiter of our cultural moment, capturing the zeitgeist with a progressive gaze, finds Kanishk Tharoor

One of the images Radhika Jones is proudest of from her tenure so far as editor of Vanity Fair comes not from the red carpets of Hollywood but the halls of Congress. After Democrats swept mid-term elections in November, a Vanity Fair image of six new Congresswomen went viral. It featured the first Muslim American and Native American women to serve in Congress, as well as the popular 29-year-old leftist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The changing face of American political life shone through with dignity and strength. “That’s the kind of imagery I want to be making,” Jones tells me. “It captures the spirit of the age, of the country, of this new wave. There is an attitude to it, it’s forward-looking. That’s where we want to be.”

Jones, 45, is the first woman “of colour” (her mother is Indian and her father white American) to lead a magazine of Vanity Fair’s prestige and influence in the United States. Though she speaks carefully—almost delicately—and with self-effacing humility, she does not hide her ambition for the magazine nor her sense of its epochal responsibility. “We are in a very volatile and exciting cultural moment,” she says. “Vanity Fair has the potential not just to reflect but to play a taste-making role in the culture.”

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