Radhika Jones, editorial director of the books department at the New York TImes, will be the next editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair, the Times reports. Jones is rumored to have beat out Adam Moss, the editor of New York; Janice Min, and Andrew Ross Sorkin—all of whose names were reportedly floated for the job.
Jones will succeed Graydon Carter, Vanity Fair’s former editor-in-chief, who announced he would be stepping down from his role in December after 25 years. Jones’s appointment to the role was spearheaded in part by New Yorker editor David Remnick, who “championed” Jones for the position. She has inherited a legacy that feels very specific to Carter’s interests—most notably the inner workings of the royals and the minutiae of WASP culture, Hollywood, and politics—but Jones will surely make it her own.
Prior to her work at the Times, Jones was deputy managing editor of Time and is most known for her overhaul of the magazine’s Time 100 end-of-year package, changing it to its current iteration, “an eclectic mix of celebrities and unheralded visionaries.”
Of the choice to select Jones over any of the other shinier, flashier names bandied about, Steven O. Newhouse, an executive at Advance Publications, which owns Condé Nast provided a a solid endorsement for someone willing and capable of doing the work. “We didn’t need a name for the sake of a name or a celebrity,” he said to the Times. “We really wanted someone who could do the job and be a worthy successor to Graydon, and I think we found someone.”