Clay Felker was a pioneering editor whose New York magazine became a template for what became known as the “new journalism” adopted by urban weeklies in America. A sometimes bitchy but always stylish glossy that included Tom Wolfe, Jimmy Breslin and Gloria Steinem in its stable of writers, New York reported on the mixture of ambition, money, culture and fashion that obsessed the city then and now.

Its table of contents mingled long, meaty narrative stories and investigative reporting with breezy consumer pieces that told New Yorkers what to buy, where to eat and which shows to see. The formula was in harmony with both New York’s metabolism and the exuberant era.

New York had begun life as a supplement to the New York Herald Tribune newspaper. Felker and the graphic designer Milton Glaser reintroduced it as a separate publication in 1968 several years after the closure of its parent paper. At a time when print journalism was threatened by broadcasting, they relied on eye-catching graphics and layouts, world-class writing and the addictive narcotics of gossip and scandal to hook their exacting yet endlessly distracted readership.

Felker’s genius was to fathom, expose and market New York’s lust for real estate, money, sex, good food and latest rumour. But, like many of New York City’s most iconic fixtures, he was not a native.

Clay Schuette Felker was born in Missouri in 1925. His father, Carl, was the managing editor of the Sporting News. Clay Felker enrolled at Duke University, left to serve three years in the US Navy, and returned to graduate in 1951. He worked for Life magazine and Sports Illustrated, and became features editor at Esquire, leaving when he was passed over for the top position there.

He joined the New York Herald Tribune in 1963 and became founding editor of the supplement that later formed the basis for his “must read” glossy. Ken Auletta, Mimi Sheraton, John Simon and dozens of the most prominent journalists in America appeared in his pages. Opinion about him from his staff was mixed — some worshipped him, others said he took pleasure in controlling and demeaning them.

In its first incarnation New York was often accused of being elitist, aimed only at educated Manhattanites who rarely set foot in the outer boroughs. Gloria Steinem fretted that pieces about and for the wealthy did not serve a city in fiscal crisis. Later Felker helped her to launch Ms, the feminist magazine. But he maintained that elites made up both the market for print journalism and its juiciest targets. In his seminal work for the magazine, an article entitled Radical Chic, Tom Wolfe devoted 20,000 words to satirising the motives of glamorous, rich liberals and Black Panthers gathered for a fundraising occasion hosted by Leonard Bernstein.

Although the magazine lost money initially, it broke even in 1970, logging a circulation of 240,000, and Felker became publisher as well as editor. In 1974 the company acquired Village Voice, and in 1976 Felker started a West Coast magazine, New West.

Later that year Rupert Murdoch made a bid for New York. Felker sought to counter this, seeking help from his old friend Katharine Graham, the Washington Post publisher. But the principal stockholder of New York, Carter Burden, had been depicted less than flatteringly by a piece in the magazine, and he chose to support the Murdoch bid.

After the sale Felker struggled to recreate the heat and buzz he had generated in New York’s heyday in any of the other magazine ventures he later undertook.

Though he suffered with throat cancer in his later years, Felker continued to work as a consultant and to teach at the journalism school at the University of California at Berkeley.

In 1984 he married his third wife, the journalist Gail Sheehy, author of Passages and other well-received books. He is survived by her, and by a daughter and stepdaughter.

Clay Felker, magazine editor, was born on October 2, 1925. He died on July 1, 2008, aged 82