Looking back at six years of New Yorker stories

I finished my job at The New Yorker on Friday, and I'm on a plane now to San Francisco where I'll start Monday as the editor of Wired. I couldn't be more excited about the challenges that await. But as I fly West, it seems like a good moment to mark some of the most memorable pieces I worked on in my six-and-a-half years at The New Yorker. I probably edited a thousand pieces in my time there, but here are twelve that jump to mind.

The Third Man: This profile of Jacob Zuma was the first story I worked on. And I still remember my feeling, somewhere between panic and pride, on the day it closed. Would this really soon be mailed to a million people?

Where's Earl Sweatshirt: I loved this profile, by Kelefa Sanneh, of the then-missing singer. The reporting was as dramatic as the prose, and it certainly set the record for most swear words in anything I edited.

The Consequentialist: This story will forever be remembered for one sentence late in the piece. "One of his advisers described the President’s actions in Libya as 'leading from behind.'" I knew people would notice the phrase, but I had no idea it would be used against Obama for years.

Looking for Mullah Omar: The profile is a sacred form at the magazine, and a good one usually requires access to the subject; Steve Coll was able to pull this one off, even though the person he was writing about had been in hiding for a decade.

The Perfect Stride: I'm a running nerd, and I take great pride in the magazine's coverage of the sport while I worked there. This piece was prescient, and then of course there was our epic on the Kip Litton marathon fraud.

Mastering the Machine: I edited John Cassidy's pieces for the print magazine and then, when I moved to the Web in the spring of 2012, he wrote consistently excellent commentary virtually every day. This was a particularly great piece about Ray Dalio and his very strange hedge fund.

My Friend, Stalin's Daughter: I only wrote one magazine feature in my time at The New Yorker—this piece about my long friendship with Svetlana Alliluyeva.

The Saudi Marathon Man: I often think back to our response to the Boston marathon bombing as the moment when the Website first truly became the vibrant, varied site it is today.

Mexico's Missing 43: One great thing about the Web is that you don't ever need to stop. And so I gladly asked Francisco Goldman to write nine pieces about the missing forty-three students from the Ayotzinapa Normal School. The series comes out to roughly forty-five thousand words, and it's still not done.

My Last Day As A Surgeon: I didn't edit this one so much as select an excerpt after being sent the galley. The author was a friend of mine in college, and his story of dealing with terminal cancer is one of the most moving and thought-provoking things you'll ever read.

An American Tragedy: David Remnick's response on election night.

Trump Enraged as Mexican President Meets with Meryl Streep Instead: Andy Borowitz often made me laugh out loud, and my last editorial act, on my last day, was to approve this post.