The creation of a "serious" Sunday magazine was part of a massive overhaul of the newspaper instigated that year by its new owner, Adolph Ochs, who also banned fiction, comic strips, and gossip columns from the paper, and is generally credited with saving The New York Times from financial ruin.

[5] In its early years, The New York Times Magazine began a tradition of publishing the writing of well-known contributors, from W. E. B.

[5] During his tenure, writers such as Leo Tolstoy, Thomas Mann, Gertrude Stein, and Tennessee Williams contributed pieces to the magazine.

When, in 1970, The New York Times introduced its first op-ed page, the magazine shifted away from publishing as many editorial pieces.

[5] In 1979, the magazine began publishing Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist William Safire's "On Language", a column discussing issues of English grammar, use and etymology.

Klosterman left in early 2015 to be replaced by a trio of authors, Kenji Yoshino, Amy Bloom, and Jack Shafer, who used a conversational format; Shafer was replaced three months later by Kwame Anthony Appiah, who assumed sole authorship of the column in September 2015.

The Sunday crossword puzzle has more clues and squares and is generally more challenging than its counterparts featured on the other days of the week.

[15] Of the serial novels, At Risk, Limitations, The Overlook, Gentlemen of the Road, and The Lemur have since been published in book form with added material.