What does a magazine maker do when there are no magazines left to make? Kristina O’Neill, the editor who made WSJ. magazine for more than 10 years, didn’t have many options on that front when she was dismissed in April 2023. Yes, O’Neill is still one of those people whose name gets floated every time one the few remaining desirable-ish top jobs comes open (Harper’s Bazaar, Vanity Fair), but there are really only three, maybe four, positions that would not be considered a step down from her gig at the Journal, where she enjoyed a tremendous amount of creative freedom despite the continually disappointing rigidity of that institution. Plus, even if she was let go for budgeting reasons—and new Journal editor-in-chief Emma Tucker’s understandable desire to start fresh—going back into traditional magazines would not be a good look. 

Most people in O’Neill’s situation slink away to consulting or working in-house for a brand, never to return. But O’Neill still wanted to make a magazine in some shape or form. “Charlie called me the day I got fired,” she told me, referring to Charles Stewart, the C.E.O. of Sotheby’s. Stewart was appointed in 2019 after Swiss-Israeli billionaire Patrick Drahi took the auction house, a popular activist target, private at a 61 percent premium with $1.88 billion in debt. (Stewart had been the C.F.O. of the U.S. division of Altice, Drahi’s telecom firm, when it went public in 2017.) After a few months of consideration, O’Neill agreed to join Sotheby’s as the head of a newly created media division. Among other things, she was given the opportunity to relaunch the in-house magazine and related digital content, plus throw some cool parties and intimate dinners.