NEW YORK—Clay Felker, who revolutionized the magazine genre as founding editor of New York, bringing readers a smart, sassy mix of gossip and news that was replicated relentlessly across the country, died Tuesday. He was 82.

Felker died with his wife, writer Gail Sheehy, at his side at their New York City home after a battle with throat cancer, the magazine said.

"Those of us lucky enough to work in the house that he built are reminded every day of the depth of his genius," New York Editor-in-Chief Adam Moss said. "He created a kind of magazine that had never been seen before, told a kind of story that had never been told."

Felker's New York became indispensable in the 1960s and '70s for those craving the latest on the city's social scene, inside knowledge of its business and politics, and consumer tips from its endless "best of" lists.

Editors across the country adopted Felker's formula -- co-founder Milton Glaser's bold layout designs and the equally non-traditional "new journalism" writing style of contributors like Tom Wolfe.

"I used to compare it to what the conversation is at a round dinner table or a dinner party that well-informed people talk about," Felker told The New York Times in 1995. "That talk about real estate, that talk about business, that talk about personal gossip, you know, what new play or movie, culture, you know, this potpourri."

Felker's editing at New York fostered the careers of such influential writers as Ken Auletta, Jimmy Breslin, Gloria Steinem and Gael Greene.

Among New York's most influential features were Wolfe's "Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny's," on the Black Panthers benefit party thrown by conductor Leonard Bernstein in 1970, and Nik Cohn's "Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night," which served as the basis for the film "Saturday Night Fever."

When publishing titan Rupert Murdoch forced Felker and Glaser out in a hostile takeover in 1977, New York's staff walked out in solidarity with their departing editors, leaving an incomplete issue three days before it was due on newsstands.

Steinem, whose first issue of Ms. magazine was sandwiched inside the pages of New York thanks to Felker, once said of her former boss, "I can think of no other editor who inspires the same combination of creativity, loyalty, and excitement in writers."

Felker published, edited and wrote for dozens of publications including Life, Time, Esquire, the Village Voice, Adweek, Daily News Today, Manhattan Inc. and U.S. News and World Report.

In 1995 the University of California at Berkeley named its magazine journalism program after Felker, and he and Sheehy moved west.