Sarah Jewler, who died Tuesday at age 56, was the longtime managing editor of New York magazine. Before that, she held similar positions at the Village Voice and Manhattan Inc.

Jewler died while awaiting a bone marrow transplant. She had been ill with a rare blood disease, said her husband, Jay Kennedy.

“She was the institutional memory of the magazine,” Caroline Miller, whose seven-year tenure as editor of New York ended last February, said. “She was great at breaking in new editors.”

Jewler’s duties included keeping after recalcitrant writers and making all sorts of decisions about each issue.

“She adored weekly journalism: the rush, adrenaline, the big egos, the eccentric characters, the gossip. She swam in it,” Ms. Miller said. “She defended the needs of the magazine ferociously.”

Jewler was born in Washington, D.C., and attended George Washington University. She finished college at the height of the hippie movement and went to Oregon, where she lived for several years on a commune. The most basic facilities were lacking in the early days, but later the group purchased a historic inn in Grants Pass that it ran as a bar.

Moving back east, Jewler worked briefly for Rodale Press, publishers of Organic Gardening and Prevention, among other magazines. She then worked in the art and production departments of several smaller magazines and was in the art department at Rolling Stone when she was selected to be managing editor of Manhattan Inc., in 1984.In 1989,Jewler became managing editor of the Village Voice, and in 1994 new editor Kurt Andersen hired her as part of a large-scale overhaul at New York.

Said Andersen, “She kept the trains running on time, like any good managing editor, but she also cared and knew about what each of the cars carried. She was utterly trustworthy in every sense.”

Jewler and Mr. Kennedy, editor in chief of King Features Syndicate, often invited members of their wide circle of press and broadcast industry friends to their Arts and Crafts-era weekend home at Orient Point. There, overlooking Long Island Sound, Jewler pursued gardening – a passionate remnant, perhaps, of her days at the commune.

Sarah Jewler
Born May 18, 1948, at Washington, D.C.; died January 5 of a blood disorder; survived by her husband, Jay Kennedy, her mother, Esther, and her brother, Leonard.