Shawn, William (1907–1992)

US journalist, editor 1952–87 of the New Yorker cultural magazine, where he nurtured many outstanding writers. As managing editor 1939–52, responsible for the factual output, he helped establish the magazine's famous commitment to absolute accuracy. He was dismissed two years after the magazine was sold.

Shawn grew up in Chicago, where he was briefly the Midwest editor of the International Illustrated News. He started at the New Yorker 1933 as a reporter, went on to become associate editor and then managing editor, before succeeding the magazine's founding editor, Harold Ross, who died in 1951.

Shawn is generally credited with having transformed the New Yorker from being an entertaining magazine to one of the USA's most influential cultural institutions. During his tenure as editor, some of the country's finest writers were contributors, including film critic Pauline Kael, fiction writers J D Salinger, John Cheever, and John Updike, and poets W H Auden and James Merrill.

Renowned for his shyness and courtesy, Shawn was held in great affection and respect by those who worked for him. When, in 1987, the Newhouse family of media magnates removed Shawn and appointed a new editor, Robert Gottlieb, 154 writers and contributors signed a letter asking Gottlieb to withdraw. After he left the New Yorker, Shawn worked as a special editor for the publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux.