By Alan Rapp, Managing Editor for New City Reader

For the past six weeks, a weekly newsprint publication, the New City Reader, has been produced on the gallery floor of New York’s New Museum. One of several projects installed in the context of the exhibition, “The Last Newspaper,” the New City Reader takes on fundamental newspaper topics and examines them in the context of an era in which both cities and media are subject to epochal shifts. Joseph Grima and Kazys Varnelis, Executive Editors of the New City Reader, created the publication to explore the intersections of urban space, public space, and information space. Using several aspects of the paper’s methodology, each week’s issue emulates a section of a conventional newspaper. Guest editorial groups—primarily architects, academics, and research groups—assign and write stories that treat the publication’s categories within an urban-information lens. The publication aims to revive the idea of the newspaper as a poster or broadside—a document that is posted in public space for a collective reading experience—which was common in 19^th century American cities and is still widely practiced around the world. The scale and design (by Neil Donnelly and Chris Rypkema) of the publication is suited for this kind of public and collective consumption.

When examining the premise of public and collective reading, the staff of the New City Reader evaluates the widespread assumption that the internet has largely replaced the civic and informational functions of the commons, the public square. With the increased flow of digital information, we notice the changing nature and quality of public space and net loss of access and participation in public spatial practice. We address this transformation through our publishing practice: the paper’s “office” and open editorial meetings within the museum.

The New City Reader enjoys a unique convergence of guest editors and contributors that include some of the leading practitioners, theorists, and research groups in the fields of architecture and urbanism. The sections and corresponding guest editors are as follows:

City                                    Network Architecture Lab

Editorial                        New City Reader Editorial Staff

Culture                                    School of Visual Arts D-Crit Program

Sports                                    Jeannie Kim and Hunter Tura

Leisure                                    Beatriz Colomina and the Program for Media and Modernity

Food                                    Park (Will Prince, Krista Ninivaggi) and Nicola Twilley

Real Estate                        Sideprojects (Mabel Wilson + Peter Tolkin)

Business                        Frank Pasquale and Kevin Slavin

Legal                        Eyal Weizman, Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths, University of             London

Local                                    Nugu (Gediminas and Nomeda Urbonas) and Saskia Sassen

Politics                                    common room

Style                                    Robert Sumrell and Andrea Ching

Music                                    DJ-NRON and DJ/rupture

Science                                    David Benjamin and Livia Corona

Weather                        C-Lab (Jeffrey Inaba)

Obituaries                        MOS (Michael Meredith)

Classifieds                        Leagues and Legions