Elaine Lafferty was named Editor in Chief of Ms. magazine in March 2003. Since then, Ms.’ newsstand sales have grown by 29 percent and account for nearly a third of the magazine’s 100,000 plus circulation. The Spring 2004 issue was the best selling single issue of Ms. in five years. The magazine’s website, Msmagazine.com, is also experiencing dramatic growth, numbering some 11 million hits per month.
The new Ms. under Lafferty’s leadership has attracted features stories in USA Today, The Los Angeles Times, the Hartford Courant, and NPR. Last year Lafferty was asked to serve as a judge for the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME) prestigious National Magazine Awards. For fun, she often appears on Fox News’ The Factor with Bill O’Reilly and On the Record with Greta Van Susteren.
Elaine was born in 1957 and grew up in New Jersey, the daughter of a jazz musician and a stay at home mother. She worked as an aide in the New York State Senate, briefly sold real estate, and attended law school before finding her calling as a journalist. She worked at several weeklies and daily papers before becoming City Hall bureau chief for City News, a wire service, in Los Angeles.
In 1987, Lafferty began reporting for Time magazine, eventually becoming a staff correspondent. Over the next 10 years, she covered a range of social justice and health issues, criminal cases and politics for the magazine. She covered the Polly Klass murder case, the OJ Simpson criminal and civil cases, the protracted Unabomber manhunt and capture, as well as the civil unrest, fires and earthquakes that shook California throughout the 1990s. Lafferty wrote or contributed to over 30 cover stories for Time and took home several journalism awards.
By 1998, Lafferty was ready for new challenges and she left Time to join the Dublin-based Irish Times, one of the oldest and most prestigious newspapers in the English language. By 1999 she was in the Balkans, covering the war in Kosovo and the former Yugoslavia. Her exclusives, later featured on CNN, during the 60-day air war included a discovery of a Serbian-run prison camp in Kosovo. Several of her stories were included in the best-selling anthology The Best of The Irish Times.
Lafferty went on to cover natural disasters in Central America and conflicts in Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Middle East, including the 2002 intifada that involved the seizure of Bethlehem. She returned to the U.S. to co-author a book with Greta Van Susteren, “My Turn at the Bully Pulpit.”
Elaine has said that covering wars – and doing so while staying alive and not running over-budget – was the best training for running Ms. magazine. She has assembled a young enthusiastic feminist staff and drawn the attention of some veteran filmmakers who have begun a documentary on the history of Ms. from its inception in 1972 to the present.
Elaine divides her time between Los Angeles and New York, where the Ms. art and production offices are based. She is also an avid boater. Occasionally, the Ms. staff can be seen having editorial meetings aboard the Ms.Shegas, a 32-foot Carver boat docked in Los Angeles.
“Being a serious, lively, funny and engaging women’s magazine can be hard work,” says Lafferty. “Getting everybody out on the water, playing with dolphins while coming up with great story ideas…. It helps keep us sane. Well…almost.”