Apart from the obvious, that the magazine industry is in dire straights, what conclusions can one draw from the latest figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulation? That the only large circulation titles that are prospering are ones most alien to the Manhattan media elite, such as Lindy's Football Annuals, and All You magazine. (Chart shows magazine newsstand sales, with titles at the top showing growth and those in decline lower down.

Spy magazine is to the media set what Sassy is to twentysomething girls: everybody loooves it and reminisces about how good it was even though those days are dead and gone. It was pretty great, although you can barely kick a dog without hearing about it. Now Folio asks, what about Wigwag mag? It launched around the time Spy did, but isn't nearly as well-remembered. Why not, certain media geeks want to know? (It could be noted that these influential magazines, appealing to a fairly small, elite circle, were both financially inviable).

Magazines are getting larger, to sell more expensive ads. Newspapers are getting smaller, to cut costs. Attention spans: shorter. [Ad Age]

How will rapey Girls Gone Wild kingpin Joe Francis convince advertisers his new magazine will capture "influencers ages 18-35?" By exploiting insecure women, teasing men with pictures of near-naked young females and littering the magazine with cheesy cross-media promotions. In other words, by adopting standard industry tactics. [Ad Age]

Apart from the New Yorker and Radar magazine, about 1,000 other titles have been evicted from the shelves of Wal-Mart, America's biggest retailer. Folio Magazine has the complete list.

Pessimistic cynics, the lot of you! Your nominations for the magazines most likely to succumb to these, our lush economic and intellectual times included TV Guide, Money, anything whatsoever to do with Rachael Ray and unsurprisingly, Radar and Portfolio. After the jump, a look at the rest.

Yesterday Adweek, the Nielsen-owned trade magazine that competes with Ad Age, relaunched both its print edition and its website. Its ad campaign (natch) scored respectful coverage from New York Times ad beat guy Stuart Elliott, who goes on and on about its funny ads, and quotes executives explaining how changing technologies, attitudes, the interweb, blah blah blah make it just vital to relaunch the "weekly" at this time&mdash with only 36 issues per year. Not mentioned, though, either in Elliott's article or in the cheeky ads, are Adweek's staffing problems; at least nine editorial staffers have left in the past two years, and less than half have been replaced. Some of that exodus was made up of people who decided they simply couldn't continue to work with Adweek editor Alison Fahey. Why? Well, she's not one for being overly complimentary. Take, for example, the way she chose to motivate all her reporters last fall as they were scrambling to finish a long-forgotten assignment on time; One got the carrot, the rest got the stick. Full email after the jump.

The 1990s gave us a war in Iraq, a trial starring O.J. Simpson, and an overdose of Bill Clinton in the media. My, how things have changed! Well, sort of. Magazines are still dying off like nobody's business. After the jump, a gallery of the past year's casualties as well as victims from the dot-com era. Give us your predictions for 2008's likely fatalities-we'll post your nominations and rub your belly if you end up being right.

Gay magazine editor Neal Boulton keeps pissing off certain gays who think he's just not gay enough, and now they've worked themselves up into a lather over Boulton's latest and possibly worst-ever attack on the gay community, which is that he's moved back in with his wife and the mother of his child. Also, he's taking his wife on dates, and might be hooking up with other women to boot, allegedly including the one at left. Boulton insisted he was "quite gay" in November after he was spotted spending the weekend at his wife's place and emphasized that she was "the mother of my children." But of course Boulton is shamefully not gay at all, as proven conclusively by an anonymous email to the website Queerty, excerpted after the jump.

No environmental program has ever in the history of ever been more brutally-named than "ReMix," the city's new "Recycling Magazines Is Excellent!" campaign. The plan aims to draw attention to the wasteful practices of the glossies industry, which, AdAge tells us, often prints copies of issues which nobody reads. Stunning. There are some decent ideas in the green scheme (recycled paper is good! Extraneous direct mail is bad!) but it's hard not to walk away with the idea that the only way for a magazine to be ecologically sustainable is to uh, well, flop. So much better for Mother Earth! After the jump, a gallery of magazines so environmentally cutting-edge that they've been dead for years.

Is Granta still the best place to look for new, excellent novelists, asks the Times of London? Apparently not, even though Granta published their 100th issue this month. The incredibly precious McSweeney's, published by Dave Eggers, is the new heavyweight contender. It's gone from "an idiosyncratic literary magazine to a new-look publishing empire."

If you work for Martha Stewart, you probably already entered "The Big Idea," a company-wide contest "that gives staff the opportunity to share their own ideas for the future of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia." Already proposed: a "special publication about collecting." You can help decide who wins. The world of Martha Stewart is not very democratic, as you can "vote as many times as you'd like over the next week." What kind of ideas—just how big are we talking here?

Aaron Hicklin, former editor of Black Book, had a perfectly rewarding job at Out Magazine. He had made the gay magazine relevant with smart covers, such as the one asking why Anderson Cooper and Jodie Foster didn't just come out of the closet, already. The success of Out has propelled the Brit into a grander role, as editorial director of other Planet Out magazines, such as The Advocate, as well as websites such as Gay.com. Yuck. Instead of jetting down to Brazil on fashion shoots with hot models, Hicklin will now have to close down The Advocate, a magazine that chronicled gay liberation but is now scarily thin. The ancient magazine struggles even to attract advertising for HIV medications. And Gay.com is a hookup site giving up ground to newer competitors such as Manhunt. Not much scope there for Hicklin's editorial flair.

Tina Brown, former editor of Tatler, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and (the failed) Talk Magazine got inducted into the American Magazine Editors Hall of Fame this afternoon. She summed up her career in the industry as "Three weddings and a funeral." The funeral being Talk. Her most recent claim to fame, a biography of Diana ten years after the princess' death, presumably falls under "grave robbing".

Britney Spears' face, and someone else's body, on the front of the latest Blender. [Idolator]

Radar is among the thousand magazines, many of them defunct, that are to be booted from the shelves of Wal-Mart, the superstore chain which dominates retail in middle America. But the Manhattan title's Maer Roshan, who has launched and relaunched his gossipy magazine three times, never gives up. To better understand the needs of readers to the west of the Hudson, we're told, Radar staffers are being sent out to Chicago, to listen in on focus groups.

Who should win the New Yorker's Eustace Tilley contest, in which the people re-interpret everybody's favorite foppish dandy? We decide! The contestants' work is shown here, but we've sorted through the boring ones. Click to see our favorite entries—they include stoners, a monkey, and hipsters!

Oh Demi Moore, with your naughty magazine cover splashes. What does the gestating kid (that would be Scout LaRue) pictured at left in your iconic 1991 Vanity Fair portrait think about the magazine's February cover of you? How about your racy appearance on the cover of the subtly-titled V? And she thought her exit from the womb sixteen years ago would be the last time she had to take an up-close-and-personal look at her mom's vadge.

Dear Manhattan-meet the rest of the country. Or at least, the lucky titles still surviving at a Wal-Mart in rural Alabama, visited this weekend by Folio. Last week, the superstore cut from its shelves more than 1,000 magazines, including the New Yorker and Better Homes and Gardens. Happy hunting, folks. Or flexing. Or both! Click the image for a closeup. [Folio]

Louis Rossetto, founder of Wired and evangelist of the internet age, is gathering his former colleagues next Friday in San Francisco for a celebration of the pioneering geek magazine. (Executives from Conde Nast, the media conglomerate that now owns the title, aren't invited.) Ah, those early optimistic days: Rossetto planted his standard in 1993, in the first issue, famously declaring that "the Digital Revolution is whipping through our lives like a Bengali typhoon." Wired is now a successful lifestyle magazine in the same stable as Vanity Fair and Vogue. And Rossetto has turned his entrepreneurial energy to his chocolate-making venture, Tcho, though its still "in beta" as they say in Silicon Valley. But it's reassuring that at least the fervent language remains a constant. "Tcho is a new kind of chocolate company for a new generation of chocolate enthusiasts," promises the company website. For more chocolate evangelism, read on.