"I'm hugely excited for it," said Oxfeld by phone today. "That's not spin or a line. It's a magazine that I've always wanted to work for."

"I've known a lot of folks at New York magazine for a long time," he said. "In fact, I was at July 4th fireworks at a New York staffer's place. That's where I met Ben Williams, who is running their web project."

Oxfeld follows, in a way, the path of Gawker's first editor, Elizabeth Spiers, who left that website to work at New York. But she has also followed him! Spiers later moved to Mediabistro.com, to fill a position identical to one formerly held by —wait for it— Oxfeld. Spiers has since moved on to found her own weblog company.

At Mediabistro, Jesse Oxfeld was the editor-in-chief of online media. He left that job for Editor & Publisher; in September, 2004, he told Gawker that "I hate change, so this is kind of sad, but it's a great opportunity."

Since his sudden and unexpected departure from Gawker Media a few weeks ago, Oxfeld has been working part time at Us Weekly; yesterday, he was working in the Wenner Media offices.

"I'm sad to give up my mid-afternoon naps," he said, of taking full-time office work, "but health and dental is a fair trade-off."

—Michael Calderone