"Observers say he's involved in all sections of the magazine, including features and accessories, and attends edit meetings... insiders say there's been talk of the hockey hard man attending the couture shows in Europe next month along with Vogue editor in chief Anna Wintour." [WWD]
Class resentment and anonymous speech on the internet make a toxic combination. (According to Fucked Company, I once paid for lazik eye surgery for a young MBA on staff whom I actually despised.) But occasionally the office legends are accurate-which is lucky because there were some particularly lurid stories about axed Star supremo Bonnie Fuller. Before the stake was put through her heart, the celebrity mag editor was so demanding and abusive to her underlings that she warranted her very own rumor message board, 'I Survived Bonnie'. The demand for first-class tickets from the Make-A-Wish charity? The bullied assistants who exacted revenge by rubbing snot in her souffle and crotch juice on the bread? All true, according to 2004's bitchy profile by Judith Newman of Vanity Fair. After the jump, read about the editor who made all her counterparts look like saints.
Don't expect to roll mobb deep to the club with Hills star Spencer Pratt unless you're ready to spread around some serious cash, my friend. In his closely-read advice column in Radar this week, the boy wonder responds to a needy fan—whom we envision wearing a tight shirt and a year-round tan—who's in anguish over only being able to hit the town with five of his boys at a time. "You can't roll in anywhere with more than five guys holding your hand," he explains. How can he satisfy all of his other homeboys who want to hold his hand in the club? Spencer says: Money money money money, monnneeeeyyyyyyy:
Adrian Moeller, publisher of Mass Appeal magazine, emails us to confirm that the hip hop lifestyle mag is in fact shutting down, as we reported yesterday: "After 12 years of publishing Mass Appeal Magazine we've decided to call it quits on the print edition," he writes "We're putting our resources into our faster growing properties, Missbehave Magazine and Colossal Media. We're in talks to sell Mass Appeal, and it may resume publishing in the future. We'll continue the website and special event productions." So, not as bad as a sharp stick in the eye.
Elle creative director Joe Zee is popular among colleagues. "I seriously don't know anyone who doesn't love Joe: he was the best thing that could have happened for morale there." No wonder he's so beloved: the free-spending Zee took an additional five friends and colleagues to the Paris and Milan ready-to-wear shows this year-included among them his rumored paramour, a former shop girl Keith Pollock. The bill for Zee's grand European tour-probably over $500,000-comes at an uncomfortable time. Elle publisher Hachette just slashed its web staff and is giving up office space at its Midtown headquarters; and grumbly bean counters are beginning to focus on the master stylist's extravagance. "The costs are out of control, and the boyfriend who is said to be reporting on fashion shoots is really at a Four Seasons getting a massage on the company tab," writes the cost-conscious tipster. Pollock-a former salesman whom Zee had placed at Elle's website-was spared the recent online cuts.
A tipster tells us that Mass Appeal, the Brooklyn-based hipsterish hip hop/ graffiti culture magazine, has folded. Editors and designers were laid off last week, and no more issues will be forthcoming, the tipster says. It's not known whether the mag will seek a buyer, or how its sister title MissBehave will be affected. If you have any information, email us. Sucks, if true—Mass Appeal was a quality rag. And to think that Cat Fancy soldiers on unscathed. What kind of world do we live in?
Bonnie Fuller, the Canadian mother-of-four who defined both the celebrity weekly and the celebrity magazine editor, is to leave her job. As the demanding editor of Us Weekly, Fuller was the most sought-after executive in the magazine industry; but she traded in her reputation for a richer deal at David Pecker's American Media. Fuller did improve group flagship Star, but it wasn't enough to dislodge Us Weekly, which continued to thrive under Fuller's successor, Janice Min. It became apparent that the peppy formula was stronger than the personal magic which Fuller had sold to American Media's Pecker. Marginalized at her new employer, Fuller spent her last couple of years in increasingly bizarre efforts to promote Star and her own flagging brand, appearing on game shows such as Identity (see screencap) and damning in blog posts the trashy celebrity culture that she had done so much to promote. It was a brutal fall from grace; and now Fuller cannot even claim to be seeking a quieter life. Her book, The Joys of Much Too Much, extolled the virtues of a hectic but full career and home life, over the simplicity and tranquility from which she will now suffer. (After the jump, American Media's press release.)
A Grand Theft Auto obsessive has matched up vistas from the hit Rockstar videogame with the real New York City. Here's the Conde Nast skyscraper in Times Square (at left) compared with the equivalent tower in Liberty City's 'Star Junction' (at right). Any GTA fans want to create mayhem in the magazine group's lobby, mow down a few Vogue interns, and send us a videograb of the results? [Matthew Johnston's Flickr page]
By the end of last week things looked pretty dark in the world of Project Runway. Even setting aside the show's imminent move to Lifetime, the lawsuit between producer Weinstein Co. and former host network Bravo and the defection of Runway's executive producers, there were also alarming reports about Marie Claire maybe partnering with the show and judge Nina Garcia leaving Elle and possibly Runway itself. None of that has yet come to pass, and Women's Wear Daily informs everyone today that it's because Garcia is still negotiating with both Elle and Runway and because neither Elle nor sad Marie Claire have even started negotiations with Runway yet. WWD also reminds everyone that as bad as Elle is, at least the magazine is growing its circulation, while Marie Claire's circ dropped nearly 60,000 copies to 341,000 last year, so maybe the magazine is being used as a pawn by both Elle (in negotiations with Weinstein Co.) and Garcia (in negotiations with Elle). When you throw in the possibility of Bravo developing its own Runway imitation, there are some real opportunities here for groundbreaking research by ambitious game theorists. [WWD]
An emailer: "15 people are to be let go at Fortune mag; about 8 through buyouts." Also, "[Money executive editor] Craig Matters left to run Fortune.com, the two deputy MEs were promoted to co-ExecEd's (yes, that is a bit bizarre and not so workable) and the photo editor Jane Clark was fired Friday. Mg. Ed. Eric Schurenberg also just lost superstar Jason Zweig and another editor (Cybele Weisser) to the WSJ. Craig was in charge of the Best Places to Live uber-franchise and many writers at the mag have said they'd bolt if Craig left." Folio confirms all this besides the Jane Clark firing. Anyone else have more details?
We hear that People magazine paid around $2 million (if not more) for the recent wedding pictures of Barbie-like singer Mariah Carey and younger actor Nick Cannon. People triumphed in a bidding war with OK!. This surely rates as one of the biggest paydays of Cannon's career, if not his wife's. And that figure would make their photos even pricier than the baby pictures of Nicole Richie and Christina Aguilera, though only half as valuable as Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt's baby shots of Shiloh. Does Mariah still move that many magazines?
The aftermath of last week's Dove "Campaign for Real Beauty" photo retouching scandal remains unclear. It all started with retoucher Pascal Dangin telling the New Yorker that he had cleaned up photos for the campaign featuring ostensibly "Real" women, which would be a hugely hypocritical move. Dove, their ad agency, and celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz all denied it, saying they did nothing to the pictures except "to remove dust and do color correction." Today, Ad Age tries to decide whether or not the fiasco will hurt Dove—and the company is still stonewalling, while the New Yorker is standing by (most of) its story.
For some reason we thought 02138—the annoyingly named pretend Harvard alumni magazine that proclaimed itself Vanity Fair for people who went to Harvard and wished to read a second, inferior Vanity Fair each month—had already been shuttered by Atlantic Media. Well, it's alive. Tiny, unknown Manhattan Media (they own the New York Press and some things you've never heard of) bought the magazine from Atlantic Media for an undisclosed price. The publisher will remain cofounder Bom Kim (for now), but Manhattan Media has decided to expand the brand into—wait for it—social networking. Then they will introduce new versions of the magazine for every other Ivy League school, because if there's a group of people who don't have enough media outlets to write for, it's Ivy grads. Amusingly, the Manhattan Media press release announcing the deal leaves out their only existing holding anyone remembers reading: the embarrassing second-string alt-weekly New York Press. That release after the jump, along with a selection from this week's Press "guest sex columnist." [NYT]
Hey, New Yorker? We all—every single one of us—have a stack of unread New Yorkers that we feel guilty about not having read yet. So just chill on the whole Twitter thing, mmkay? Especially if you Twitter things like, "Rahm Emanuel, undecided superdelegate, said that Obama is the 'presumptive nominee' during a conversation at The New Yorker Conference." Dorks. [New Yorker Dot Com]
Beauty product purveyor Dove has finally responded to allegations, first reported in a New Yorker story, that the company retouched photos of the "Real" women in its "Campaign for Real Beauty" ads. Which would make them big hypocrites. But according to a statement from Dove this morning (via its PR agency, Edelman), the New Yorker was wrong. The company even got a quotable refutation from controversy-courting celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz! Their full denial is after the jump.
It is the inevitable coda to the many problems at Hachette — the loss of Elle's Project Runway ties, the layoffs, the pathetic Web traffic — and according to Page Six it has finally begun: Nina Garcia is leaving Elle. According to the gossip page, the Runway judge is following her reality fashion show to Hearst's Marie Claire. Of course everyone saw this coming, literally. Garcia was recently spotted coming out of the Hearst building after ditching a big Elle party a couple of weeks prior. But the likelihood Garcia will remain on the show offers some faint hope to Runway viewers that new host network Lifetime won't be able to wreck it completely. It also raises the question of whether Marie Claire will somehow ruin Garcia completely, but she's survived at one dysfunctional, second-tier fashion title already, so why worry? [Post]
Time magazine brought together members of its 100 "Most Influential People" list at Time Warner Center tonight, and thanks to phone-blogging members of the press, the celebrities' trash talking, braggadocio and false humility has already hit Twitter in a sort of first-draft of the recaps that will probably hit blogs and newspapers over the next few days. after the jump are some highlights, including quips from Robert Downey Jr., Amy Poehler and John McCain, plus fameball Julia Allison explaining why she wasn't invited.
When Jack Kliger took over Elle and Hachette's other US titles in 1999, he established himself as one of the magazine industry's few multimedia visionaries. The former Conde Nast publisher pushed Hachette's content onto EchoStar's interactive TV platform; Hachette's Car and Driver teamed up with the USA Network to produce a reality show spin-off of Cannonball Run, the cross-country car-race movie. And, when Hachette closed Elle Girl and Premiere magazines but kept their websites going, Kliger the charmer spun the cost-cutting exercise as an embrace of online media. So how's that going? Try utter disaster. We've been getting reports all day that the group has laid off almost its entire online staff. And here's one good reason: even Hachette's most successful online properties have the reach of a mid-sized blog, according to previously undisclosed web stats. (Oh, yes, and Hachette's Elle is about to lose its cherished role on Project Runway, the fashion-industry reality show.) If the future of magazines is some multimedia magic, as Kliger has been saying for a decade, Hachette has not much of a future; nor the Hachette boss himself.
