LOS ANGELES (NYTimes) - Mr Graydon Carter, former editor of Vanity Fair, is taking what he has called a six-month "garden leave" in France after 25 years as one of the United States' most influential magazine editors.

He is not, however, staying idle. Mr Carter, who has produced films and opened restaurants, said he was exploring new ventures - the first of which is set to debut on Monday.

Zig, an app that aims to simplify users' consumption of news, is his first public project since he left Vanity Fair last month. It resembles an Instagram of news: a feed of photographs culled from stories around the web, with the material tailored to a user's interests.

He is one of several high-profile investors in Zig, along with music producer Quincy Jones, Hollywood mogul Ron Meyer and concert giant Live Nation.

The idea was pitched to Mr Carter at a tech-industry conference hosted by Vanity Fair in 2016. Then, he was mulling over the state of news; he recalled an assistant pointing out to him that millennials "think in more visual terms, than in textual terms".

The photos that appear in a Zig feed double as links to the underlying articles, a referral system that the founders say could lead to revenue-sharing agreements with news sites.

The app was originally designed for entertainment news but Mr Carter suggested that the founders broaden the scope.