Sitting on Jody Quon's desk is a yellow Post-It note. Small loops of ovals stand alone or double up or nest together in boxes.
Each oval represents a woman. Each woman has publicly said she was sexually assaulted by Bill Cosby.
Those faces had not been seen, together, before Quon, photography director of New York Magazine, arranged them. In the end, the cover included the devastating image of 35 of the women that have come forward to accuse Bill Cosby of rape or sexual assault, along with one empty chair to represent the women who were not yet ready to show their faces.
The power of the cover was visual, it was instant, and it brought home, as no one else had, exactly how many lives had been changed, or ruined, by Cosby's actions. "Cosby: The Women" ran first digitally, pairing video testimonials and audio that raced from user to user across the internet.
Just as suddenly as it took off, it stopped. A hacker claimed responsibility for taking down New York's website, rendering the information unavailable. The magazine moved the story off its site, posting the text and pictures on Tumblr and the video interviews on Instagram.
The metaphor, however, was unavoidable. From beginning to end, New York's Cosby cover was about the struggle to be heard when larger forces are trying to shut you down -- and why those forces are losing.
The pitch
Quon leafs through papers in a manila folder on her desk at the offices of New York Magazine. Inside is a chronological compilation of the women that had come forward to accuse Cosby.
"When you get the bird's eye view of all the women like that, that's when you really get a sense of the volume, the true volume," Quon said.
Six months ago, Quon had the germ of the idea for the piece. The magazine's staff had brainstormed how to approach the Cosby story differently. The weight of Cosby's fame crushed any woman's voice out of the frame. Much of the existing coverage had focused on Cosby himself, leaving the women unmentioned except two or three names, and those who spoke up faced threats and disparagement and, most painfully, disbelief from others.
To start, Quon assembled their faces and stories and names into a chronological file. That created a stark illustration of the extent of the allegations against Cosby, Quon said. The sheer volume of it informed the final version of the story.
Quon said the initial idea behind the article was not immediately embraced. It wasn't until she started making cold calls to the women that momentum grew and with it, interest. She said her initial nervousness about making the calls dissipated quickly after speaking with the first group of women. They were hungry to speak, to testify publicly after years of silence or shame. Quon says it only took one day of calling to get the first six women to agree to participate.
"We just decided to call half a dozen women to get a feeler for this, and they all said yes," Quon said. "That was a great litmus test for all the other women that we were able to get on board."
Her initial success, along with support from other editors, was enough to convince editor-in-chief Adam Moss that this was the way to pursue the Cosby story.
The stories
After reaching the first six women on that first day, Quon easily found a larger network. The women helped connect other victims with Quon and her colleague Noreen Malone. Not all the women contacted wanted to participate. A total of 46 women have come forward so far, 35 of which spoke with NY Mag.
It was enough. Six months of work was starting to pay off. Ten days before the story ran on July 26, New York had 31 women, banded together, in a powerful image that was central to the piece from the start. But the photos alone weren't the whole story, said Noreen Malone, the senior editor who wrote the essay introduction.
"I think the photos were clear from the beginning but we weren't sure how we were going to tell the story and what the story was," she said.
A few different arrangements were tried. At first, a short intro essay led into fact-based captions about each of the women. That was abandoned because, as Malone put it, "that felt bloodless."
"As we started talking to the women, it became clear that what was compelling were their experiences. And that once you got them talking about that, it's what you wanted to listen to," Malone said.
Eventually, the magazine went with the lightest touch possible. The introductory essay set up the story before letting the women speak for themselves.
The piece was just about ready to go until a bombshell dropped. 10 days before the publishing date, Cosby's deposition in one of his sexual assault cases went public. In it, he admitted to giving women quaaludes, a strong and now illegal depressant, and then having sex with them. He portrayed it as an innocuous act, but to many it was an admission of guilt. To NY Mag, it had reignited the public's interest just as they finished up the piece.
The publicity spurred the editors and writers to revisit some of the women who had turned them down. Four more women agreed to participate.
The hack
The story went up on Sunday night. The magazine and its editors had prepared a significant roll out, complete with content customized to Instagram and Twitter. The response was nearly immediate, with people flocking to the story. Other magazine editors and journalists were lavish in their praise.
This is an incredible cover https://t.co/jawb1euuwT— Jake Silverstein (@jakesilverstein) July 27, 2015
Seriously, cancel the National Magazine Awards and give them the Ellie now http://t.co/Wmtqz6tK2h. https://t.co/IYNA7CNqqP— Evan Smith (@evanasmith) July 27, 2015
New York did a huge splash, featuring the story in several places on its website. But most prominently, it was on The Cut, the magazine's lifestyle and fashion channel aimed at women.
Big admiration for NYMag's Cosby roundup. I don't understand why it's hosted on The Cut, though. Rape isn't a women's issue, it's a crime.— emily nussbaum (@emilynussbaum) July 27, 2015
A New York spokeswoman defended the placement. "It appeared across all our verticals—in print and on the home page, and was posted to Daily Intelligencer, Vulture, and The Cut...It ultimately lives on The Cut for the practical reason that The Cut’s article templates meant this story would look the best there, and the project fits the mission of the site. We plan to publish more and more significant journalism there."
There weren't many other quibbles. Everything looked good.
Most of the NY Mag team had gone to bed by midnight, but Lainna Fader, the magazine's engagement editor, was still up checking mentions on social media.
"I have pretty bad insomnia so I stayed online and was still looking at Tweetdeck," she said. She had begun to see some references to people having problems accessing the site. The problem, she figured, could be up to heavy traffic.
By about 1:30 A.M. EST early Monday morning, it was clear that these were no ordinary website issues. The magazine's website was under attack from hackers that would later claim to be going after the magazine just because of its affiliation with New York City.
Fader helped rally whoever they could find or wake up to try to fix the problem, but they would be unable to get the site back online until later the next day.
Fortunately, the magazine had an unexpected insurance policy in place. As part of the story, the writers and editors had used the video, audio and pictures taken during the project to create specialized content for a variety of platforms including Instagram and Twitter. The magazine had made a series of "audiograms" featuring clips from interview with the women laid over their pictures.
With the site still down, the editors looked for other ways to disseminate the story.
"Obviously the preference is to have people read our site with the six months of work from half a dozen teams here," she said. "But at the end of the day we just wanted people to read the story."
That drive led them to put the entire story on Tumblr, including a post for each of the 35 interviews as well as the essay from Malone. Combined with the native social content, which they pushed out immediately instead of the original plan to spread it out over a few days, these efforts kept the story in front of readers just as it was seeing widespread circulation.
NYMag hack has shown utility of social. Feature story now on their Tumblr, while video testimonials are on Instagram https://t.co/U3TjX3ot1u— Melanie Renzulli (@melanierenzulli) July 27, 2015
Fader echoed the words of Tamara Green, one of the women that was featured in the piece, who said. "In 2015, we have social media. We can't be disappeared."