New Yorker's New Face: Malcolm X

NEW YORK - This is not your father's New Yorker.

Today's edition of the literary weekly features a painting of Malcolm X on its cover and a full-page photograph of the slain black leader inside - the first time in the magazine's 67-year history that an article has received such treatment.

The issue is the second overseen by new editor Tina Brown.

The cover painting, by Josh Gosfield, is a collage that features a drawing of Los Angeles beating victim Rodney King and a picture of Malcolm X with Martin Luther King Jr.

The picture of Malcolm X accompanying the article on him was taken by Richard Avedon in 1963.

Brown, the former Vanity Fair editor who was responsible for the cover of a naked and pregnant Demi Moore, has a reputation for putting together eye-catching front pages.

"Josh Gosfield's portrait of Malcolm X stands on its own as a work of art," Brown said in a statement yesterday. "That is a standard any New Yorker cover must meet."

According to a New Yorker spokeswoman Maurie Perl, the issue marks one of the few times a drawing of a real person has been featured on the cover, and it's the first time the cover has been related to an article inside.

During World War II, caricatures of Adolf Hitler, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill and the like made the cover, but never in conjunction with an article.