What were we saying yesterday about all the really good insults coming from Brits? London's Guardian on [downtown fashion magazine] Nylon magazine: their "target market is evidently every jaded, self-regarding New York hipster who thinks they're part of a movement, as opposed to the sort of people with whom you could only bear to have a conversation if speedballs were provided." Them, and lonelygirls in Osaka and Ohio. [Guardian]
As rumored, AMI has bought the website RadarOnline.com, just as the print version of Radar folds. That, incongruously, puts the site under the same corporate umbrella as the celebrity mags Star and the National Enquirer, which may now become off-limits for mockery. The site will be "relaunched" in 2009. Judging from the tone of the press release alone, the site may well be repositioned to be far more credulous in its celebrity coverage, and consequently less funny. The effect on the RadarOnline staff is not clear yet; we'll fill in details as they come. Full press release from AMI below: American Media Inc. and Integrity Multimedia Company form joint venture to launch a new and enhanced RadarOnline web site
BREAKING: We hear that Radar, the smart-shallow magazine and website, is laying off "EVERYONE." Repeat: "EVERYONE." Including some beloved former Gawker editors. This will be everyone's last day at the office, apparently. The New York Observer says that "there might a business arrangement to keep the web site afloat and that it will be sold to AMI," although we've heard no confirmation of that [UPDATE: It's true]. It appears that Radar chief Maer Roshan has, indeed, killed trees until all the money is gone.
Perhaps the recent rumors about editor-from-hell Bonnie Fuller helming celebrity weekly OK! were a clever way of ensuring a warm staff welcome for the real editor-in-chief and publisher, both set for announcement tomorrow. They are former Quick & Simple EIC Susan Toepfer and Niche Media senior VP Lori Burgess, respectively, the Post's Keith Kelly is reporting. Recently-installed general manager Kent Brownridge insisted his choice for editor "had never been Bonnie," but his passing on the pricey and profligate former Us Weekly chief is as good a sign as any that the economic meltdown will slam celebrity entertainment media as it has banking and real estate.
Elizabeth Spiers is doing a new thing! Spiers, the Gawker founding editor-turned-media mini-mogul and closely watched savant of the blog business, is already talking about her next project, which doesn't have financial backers yet. It's going to be an "online magazine" (translation: blog) aimed at women. Uh oh, does that mean she's taking on our sister Jezebel?
♦ Cuts have arrived at Hearst: Cathie Black (left) is "going floor by floor at the Hearst Tower to trim costs and staff positions." [WWD]
♦ Lloyd Grove talks to Tina Brown about her new site and the economic climate: "It's pretty scary. It's scary, scary, scary." [Portfolio]
♦ The New York Times Co. reported profits fell 51 percent for the quarter amid the drop in advertising sales. Traffic to the Times website, however, is up. [Bloomberg, AP, NYO]
Who says the magazine industry is in trouble, besides all informed analysts? Plain old pessimists, they are! For example, did you know that according to prominently quoted guy "Mr. Magazine," new magazine launches are actually up this year? We looked back at the dozens of hot new titles that launched just last month, and we've selected the twelve most promising. Hobbies for the poor, escapism through porn and pets, and information about your various afflictions are especially popular! Gaze upon the future of media:
Let's play the game "Who said it, and about what?": "It was a silly gimmicky thing." "Ridiculous." "I was embarrassed by it. I think most people at Hearst were embarrassed by it." "I was embarrassed that the Esquire name was on it." "That wasn't great, that was just ridiculous." "This Mickey Mouse light clicking on an off. It's not an idea." "When will they learn, oh lord? How long will it take for them to learn?"
To answer someone's question of "and who praytell is Peaches Geldof?" It's "she is the latest It Girl foisted upon us, and we hate to snowball her semi-fame into a larger fameball by covering her, but the newshole is only so big, and we gotta write something." And also: "daughter of washed-up Irish rocker Bob" and the late Paula Yates. As we said, she's 19 and a little cokey and just moved here from London with her new husband to write/model at downton fashion mag Nylon, which we are sure pays very well! She's written her first column! And it is poetic. It's about the sunset and the Williamsburg bridge and how it feels when you're taking a cab over the bridge at night. New York is a magical place—and teen British expats understand this perhaps more poignantly than us cynics.
So Portfolio went with a Dov Charney cover in the midst of the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression. Hey, what do you expect them to do—undo stuff that had already been planned? What are they, a daily? No, they're a monthly, and they refuse to get all worked up about anything. They must maintain their office's monk-like atmosphere at all costs. And their fellow business mags agree: with a little creative editing, you can make it look like you're covering this crisis without doing any extra work at all! Portfolio's response to the crisis: meetings.
The ink is barely dry on those first giddy divorce filings, and already the vultures are circling world's biggest pop star Madonna and her cuckolded soon-to-be ex-husband, "film director" Guy Ritchie. While the two stars themselves have remained relatively demure about the whole matter—Madge makes the same "emotionally retarded" joke at every concert, Guy reportedly said on the set of his new film Sherlock Holmes, "today's going to be a weird one, but don't feel awkward because this is where I want to be" while waving a copy of a British tabloid—the press has been a little more salacious. The latest Us Weekly features a gushy, long-for-that-publication article on the storied split, providing hideous and sad details like how Ritchie used to refer to sex with his Isla Bonita as "cuddling up with a piece of gristle." That's just... well, that's poetry Mr. Ritchie. How messy is this thing going to get? One hopes, because there are three young children involved, that they'll keep their cool and blunder on in private. Though discretion is not always Maddy's forte and Guy will have to come to terms with the fact that he's not really famous without his muscly bride. Though juicy details about Madonna's Kaballah-fueled romp in the twenty million dollar hay with Yankees sucker Alex Rodriguez and Ritchie's supposed on-set romance with a young British chippy promise to "entertain" for some time. Plus, there are wonderful unconfirmed tidbits about Madge slapping Guy and calling him a coward for eating chocolate bars, and Guy returning fire by calling her old and wrinkly. Whee! The tabloid press will, of course, screech and caw and ruffle their feathers, pulling smaller and smaller strands of meat from this marriage's dessicated carcass, but eventually—if Madonna and Guy play it close to their chests—they'll have to find some other moldering corpse of a blessed union to feed off of. Who's due? Um... Ashlee and Pete? Nicole Richie and that man that she married? Elton and David??
♦ Bill O'Reilly has signed a new four-year contract with Fox News worth $10-12 million a year. There is good news, though: His radio show may be coming to an end. [NYDN]
♦ More bad news for Harvey Weinstein: A handful of senior execs at The Weinstein Co. have announced their departures. [THR]
♦ How are monthly business magazines keeping up with the financial crisis? They're not, really. [NYO]
♦ The offices of the New York Times received an envelope this morning containing a "white granular substance." [Radar]
The last time we checked in with Bonnie Fuller, in August, the ex-Us Weekly editor was seeking "partners, financing and advertiser support" for a website aimed at women 20-40. That can't be going well right about now. Which might explain how OK! magazine could afford to bring on Fuller as a consultant, as CoverAwards is reporting, even though she was recently pulling down $2.1 million per year as editorial director at American Media Inc.
A new round of layoffs is coming to Time Inc. "in the very near future," sources tell the Post's Keith Kelly. But please don't worry about the top brass, departing magazine staff, because they're doing just fine. They've still got their Caribbean retreats, you'll recall, and millions of dollars with which to buy celebrity baby pictures. And it looks like a surprise contract extension is in store for Ann Moore, the Harvard MBA who saw online revenue grow 76 percent this year, even amid cost cutting. That's probably why she's got enough swagger to gab to the Times of London about the "two-year plan" she keeps right next the contract with 18 months left on it. According to Kelly, she's probably right to feel to secure enough to assume she'll get a renewed mandate:
In its review of Elle-focused reality show Stylista, the Times finds plenty to like, surprisingly. It seems hippie editor Anne Slowey does a surprisingly convincing impersonation of Meryl Streep imitating Miranda Priestly standing in for mean old Anna Wintour of Vogue. (So much for those embarrassing preview clips from a few months ago.) The catfighting is inspired and "novel." And yet that's not what will hook you on the show. You'll watch because you are aching to pretend, for an hour each Wednesday, that the brutal hierarchy of yesteryear lent work an elegant simplicity. Writes the Times' Gina Bellafante:
Illustrious Doubleday book publishing exec Julie Grau takes to the pages of Vogue this month to muse about her "definitive ab-sculpting workout": "On the floor, we pretzel our legs and torque our bodies through an array of exercises that Tanya promises will 'fry the fat off your hips' and get rid of unsightly waistband overhang." Sorry Julie, spot reduction of fat is a myth. I'm surprised you didn't know that. You can read about it in a book. [NYO]
Chace Crawford, well-coiffed pretty pretty princess Gossip Girl actress, is plagued by rumors that he is gay, mostly because he is a beautiful lady who lives with his costar Ed Westwick. He was even on the cover of Out magazine a few months back! Now he's gracing, solo!, the front of V Man magazine, a publication targeted at a readership who enjoys looking at photos of gorgeous, feminine young men. In the mag, he's got a sweeping hairdo and says things in the interview like "I don’t know if I could pull off a Kevin Spacey, but I’ll try!” Oh Chace. I'm sure you could pull off Kevin Spacey. Just ask him. I'm sure he wouldn't mind. Hey! There are two more of these silly V Man photos after the jump.
The layoffs we heard about earlier today at Adweek have been confirmed by the company—sort of. An Adweek story and a statement to PRNewser confirm Nielsen Business Media's, ahem, "Reorganization," which will consolidate the staffs of Adweek, Brandweek, and Mediaweek, while leaving them all as separate brands. Layoffs are taking place, though the company doesn't go into details (we heard around 20, and UPDATE: Folio says 19 total—11 in the Adweek group and 8 from other publications). It's a sign that trade mags are no safer than their consumer-oriented peers in this awful economic climate. And it offers some truly classic examples of fact-free corporate jargon:
