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We're still aflutter with excitement over yesterday's miraculous appearance of Radar Online. While we're busy processing all that intelligence, fresh or otherwise, it seemed a good time to step back and answer some frequently asked questions about Radar and our seemingly irrational obsession with it. (As one ever-tactful Craigslist poster noted, "Gawker looks like a goddamn Radar bukkake shot.")

Um, so what exactly is this Radar thing you guys keep going on about?

Smart, hip, and up-to-the-minute, Radar covers news, trends, and celebrity culture with bracing honesty and irreverence. Tapping into the voice of an ascendant generation, it's poised to become one of those rare titleslike Rolling Stone in the '70s, Spy in the '80s, and Vanity Fair in the '90sthat defines a cultural moment by getting there first.

Hmm. Could you try that again, this time not stealing from the press kit?

If we must. Radar is a new, small magazine (they're selling a 150,000 rate base), put out by some people we (and probably you) know, that launched two years ago, did a pair of issues, and then essentially failed, all to tremendous hype within the media world and little notice in the real world. Now it's back, presumably to follow the same trajectory.

Jesus. That is small. Even the freakin' Nation has 180,000-plus in circ. Why do you care so much?

Because everyone in medialand cares, whether they admit it or not. For chrissakes, Radar announces it'll have a website, and it makes the front page of the Times business section.

But why do all those media people care? From what I hear, none of them think the mag will last.

They definitely don't think it'll last. But Maer Roshan, Radar's editor, is both a self-described publicity whore and also a nice guy and a good editor, which means everyone knows him and likes him and is intrigued by this whole project and willing to play along with his whoring. Plus, with a cast of dozens on his masthead, everyone has at one point or another worked, drank, and/or hooked up with at least a few of the staffers.

So this whole orgy of overcoverage is just because you know some folks who work there? Nothing grander and more principled?

It's also because we're fascinated by this whole endeavor. It's so retro, so quixotic, so end-of-the-empire. Launches like this don't happen anymore. In 1925, Harold Ross could get some smart friends together, find a yeast heir with some money, and start a great new general-interest mag. But in 2005? Today new titles are whipped up in Ann Moore's special test kitchens, ready to go with an angle and a niche and a marketing concept. The romantic in us wants to believe in Radar. But then our inner realist remembers what a lost cause it is. The old-line media world is dying, and everyone in those office towers on Sixth Avenue knows it is but doesn't know how to react. So Radar becomes the Great White Hope, even when folks know it won't work, because they want it to work. So everyone gives it all this coverage. And we do, too, sort of to make fun of that coverage, but also sort of from a mix of hope and poignance and admiration and sadness.

"Hope and poignance and admiration and sadness?" Who are you?

Right. And because it's easy to mock. We like mockery.

Better.