35 of Bill Cosby’s Accusers Posed for a Powerful New York Magazine Cover Story


New York magazine just released its newest cover story, which features 35 women who have publicly accused Bill Cosby of sexual assault for one powerful photo series. The arresting black and white cover photo presents each accuser seated in a chair with one final empty seat remaining at the end.

The magazine spoke to all 35 women separately over the course of six months. Noreen Malone writes:

Each story is awful in its own right. But the horror is multiplied by the sheer volume of seeing them together, reading them together, considering their shared experience. The women have found solace in their number—discovering that they hadn’t been alone, that there were others out there who believed them implicitly, with whom they didn’t need to be afraid of sharing the darkest details of their lives.

On Monday morning, just hours after the story was published online, the magazine’s website appeared to be hit by a DDoS attack blocking any attempt to successfully read any article coming from New York. The alleged hacker told the Daily Dot the hacking had nothing to do with the cover story and it was instead motivated by a recent bad trip to New York City.

People have since responded on social media by using the hashtag #EmptyChair to praise the story and to speak out against sexual assault.

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Owned by no one—except you.

We just keep seeing it happen: Newsrooms owned by billionaires and corporations are spinning their own narratives, overwriting the truth, following only stories that keep them in the pocket of those with even more power.

Not here. We’re not owned by anyone. We’re not part of any cult that demands our allegiance to a bottom line. We’ve spoken up and spoken out while other newsrooms changed their stories—or cut them altogether—to keep the C suite happy.

Our mission is to find the truth and amplify it. That’s why we’re independent, nonprofit, and, crucially, funded by readers. The investigations on our website will always be free to read, watch, and listen to, but our newsroom is powered by readers who pitch in what they can so we can keep asking the hard questions.

Can you chip in today?

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