Running a free monthly magazine about outdoor sports in the New York area is probably not the most lucrative niche in the media, so it's perfectly understandable that a publisher would want to look for some creative ways to sell ad space. But selling the entire front cover for a product placement? That may be the point at which you cease to be an actual magazine. Although that didn't stop Metrosports NY from doing it:
Hey, nice back cover of New York magazine this week—a shirtless athlete! Not just any shirtless athlete would be appropriate for their refined demographic, however. With rowdy soccer players often thought of as being low-class (and a populist sport to boot), and with Michael Phelps being a little odd-looking, it's only natural that classy New York's contribution to male pinups would be Rafael Nadal, a tennis player. Sports that usually require money or horses—like tennis, rugby and polo—are the ones whose players are more acceptable for refined ladies to fall for. (Nouveau riche footballer David Beckham doesn't count; he comes from a humble background.) For NY Mag to venture into the perilous category of totty, it's either the "classy sportsman" route or the faux-serious, artistic homage (Lindsay Lohan as Marilyn Monroe.)
When the news broke that the next Harry Potter movie, The Half-Blood Prince, was being pushed from this fall to next summer (because Warner Bros. feared a tent pole-less 2009), things must have been squirmy down at the old Entertainment Weekly offices. Though owned by the same Time Warner company, Warner Bros. failed to let the magazine in on the "important friggin' information," so they ran a big splashy Harry Potter cover for their Fall Movie Preview (always the best issue of the year, in my opinion.) Though, it's not the first time a cover has been blown like this-at least Harry Potter isn't dead.
New York is stoking a rivalry between Nina Garcia of Project Runway and Marie Claire and Anne Slowey, Garcia's TV stand-in at Elle and star of the forthcoming reality show Stylista. It's hard to imagine either of the two fashion editors terribly minded New York's in-depth article on their differences — which, disclosure here, was written by our own Moe — considering they both have shows to push, Slowey's being brand new and Garcia's in the midst of a controversial jump to Lifetime. But it's hard to imagine Slowey, who desperately needs to put Stylista's embarrassing trailers behind her, is thrilled about the particulars of how she looks.
Despite an absence of any "news," every political magazine and newspaper is rushing to publish special "St. Paul and Denver" editions for the political conventions. CQ, Roll Call, and The Hill are publishing on-site daily! Politico will be there! Local papers are throwing everything they have at the event! National Journal expects big things! Meanwhile, all the high-powered attendees will be getting drunk and occasionally checking the New York Times on their iPhones, and the smart reporters just stay home and make shit up. The real reason for the outpouring of journalistic effort:
Lewis Lapham's forthcoming Harper's column on Tim Russert is not entirely unexpected, given the cranky literary liberal's public pronouncements on the late host of Meet The Press. But Lapham, sometimes slammed as insufferable bore, has spun a compelling essay out of his rough initial pronouncement that "1,000 people came to [Russert's] memorial service because essentially he was a shill for the government." Maybe Lapham's thorough disassembling is so tasty this time around because the reverence for Russert (not to mention his son Luke) was so completely over the top: two days and three nights of televised memorial, or some 96 hours of airtime, by Lapham's count. Lapham's column is called "Elegy For A Rubber Stamp," entertains the concession that Russert was probably a good father and friend and Catholic, and then swifty moves on to saying Russert had "the on-air persona of an attentive and accommodating headwaiter," that his "stock in trade was the deftly pulled punch" and that Russert was a "pet canary." Further excerpts after the jump.
OK, fine, we'll admit this is funny: it's a video of Vanity Fair editorial assistant getting "fired" for failing to get 10,000 friends on Facebook for the magazine. Editor Graydon Carter even makes an appearance: "Facebook—what's that again?" (By the way, we hear that the underlings hate hate the stunts they're forced to act out for VF's website.) [VF Online]
Leslie Kaufman's feature on Waverly Inn for the Times dining section reads too cutesy and is almost nakedly self-ingratiating. The writer couldn't find one angry chef or would-be patron to slag Graydon Carter's It-restaurant? But the piece is well-researched, on its own puffy terms, and thus useful to those strivers eager to be seen among the restaurant's celebrity diners, no matter how expensive the macaroni or rich the wine list. Here, then, is a quick list of the ways to lose friends and alienate people, and perhaps accomplish the opposite, at the Waverly:
A lonely van for the recently-defunct Playgirl magazine, in Williamsburg. Playgirl will live on in digital form, however, so the van can still be put to good use—in a number of ways!
Nightlife photographer Patrick McMullan has always wanted to be respected. His pictures helped create the reputations of niche characters ranging from hipster party gods the Misshapes to famed socialgay publicist Kristian Laliberte, and McMullan himself sees no reason he shouldn't share the spotlight. Unfortunately for him, he's fundamentally an inflated paparazzo, and not a wealthy one-a pretty significant stumbling block to becoming close friends with real celebrities. What to do, when publishing books has proved fruitless? Start a self-branded magazine, of course! (That comes on your iPhone, for some reason?) McMullan's new "magazine" will be strictly iPhone-only, I guess to keep it out of the hands of the wrong crowd. The "magazine" will be called PMc and feature his own photos, a double shot of self-promotion.
"Rush & Molloy" today ask: "What publisher and man-about-town may have had a liaison with Rielle Hunter, the woman who had an affair with John Edwards and a relationship with his pal Jay McInerney? He's told friends they were 'in bed for a week.'" That's a liaison? We call it a hangover (or a stay-cation!), but let's not split hairs. Who is it? Nick Denton? John Peter Zenger? Is Men's Health publisher Jack Essig a man-about-town? Actually how great would it be if it was Jared Kushner! In bed with a week with the acid-damaged Donna Rice. He's probably not her type, though. Former presidential candidate Steve Forbes would be a similarly amusing choice. Maybe it's Bob Guccione, Jr? After Ann Coulter and Candace Bushnell, we know he likes insane blondes. And they've got to make Rielle look low-maintenance, right? Wait, shit, it's Felix Dennis, isn't it?
Speaking of cratering ad sales in print media: Your favorite fashion magazine's historically huge September issue is going to be a bit lighter this year. Which god knows is a good thing for our nation's lower backs. Not so good, though, for the equally hardworking slaves to fashion that toil in the caves of Conde Nast and Hearst. W magazine lost 18% of its ads this September! (What, not enough girl-on-girl covers?) And almost all of their brethren are suffering, too. Is it finally a backlash against ostentatious luxury in lean times? Not at all, actually. It's not the luxury companies that are cutting back on their ads, you see; Oscar de la Renta, for example, increased his ad spending 15% to bring you news of his new $5,000 handbags. Rather, it's "midtier marketers" like bebe and Nordstrom's that are responsible for the decline. So while fashion magazines are totems for a certain segment of the overclass, their suffering is not a sign of fewer rich people. Rather, it's yet another indicator of the decline of the aspirational middle class. As goes W magazine, so goes the American dream.
Finally, a silver lining to the declining economy! This month you won't need to put in extra time at the gym in order to be fit enough to carry the fall issues of Vogue and W home from the newsstand (nor will it take 20 minutes of flicking until you reach any actual content): ad pages in both mags (as well as other fashion and beauty titles) are way down, reports the WSJ today, as advertisers, especially mid-tier brands, scale back. (Anna Wintour won't be hanging up her Chanel couture just yet, however: The September Vogue still has 674 pages of ads.) Similar shrinkage will soon take place at Rolling Stone, news that actually may be welcome to the mag's core readership of aging rock fans, since they probably have difficulty raising their arms anyway. Founder and publisher Jann Wenner has decided to shave a few inches off the mag's size, although he's quick to point out that the mag is going to spend more on production, with glossier paper and a flat, glued spine instead of staples, in the hopes of attracting new advertisers and younger readers. What, slapping the Jonas Brothers on the cover to appeal to ten-year-old girls wasn't enough?
There's no question the auto industry-particularly the US auto industry-is currently in the toilet. There's also no question that bad times for the auto industry lead to cuts in car companies' advertising budgets, which hurts the print and broadcast media outlets that reap billions from automakers every year. That's not news to anybody. What is news is the revelation that prospects for the print media have grown so dim that they are now celebrating the fact of declining auto ads, as proof that they're at the mercy of temporary business cycles beyond their control. Wow, that's sad: Newspapers nationwide lost more than $130 million last year in auto ad sales. Car ads have gone from 10% of national newspaper ads, to less that 3% in just three years. That's terrible by any standards. Magazines are experiencing a similar decline. So how to put this disaster in a good light?
Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner just confirmed to the Times that he's shrinking the once-groundbreaking magazine to a distinctly ordinary format. And already, in that same story, the magazine mogul has allowed himself to sound insecure about the change. "I myself was kind of torn about it," Wenner said. He's right to be worried. Rolling Stone's large format stirred a certain nostalgia. And not just among readers, as the Times noted, but also among a more important group: The celebrities who still trip over themselves to appear on the magazine's iconic cover, despite the fairly humdrum content within. That magnetic draw will surely be diminished now that the publication looks so thoroughly contemporary, and 1967 so very far in the past. After the jump, Wenner pulls off a similarly-self-defeating trick in a year-old Charlie Rose interview by saying the key difference between rollingstone.com and Facebook is that the latter is "kind of a teen thing."
The Beyonce/ L'Oreal Photoshop scandal, which began earlier this week, has reached critical mass. Lots of people think that L'Oreal digitally lightened a photo (pictured) of Beyonce in an ad in Elle magazine. L'Oreal denies it. The contention that they did lighten the pop diva's skin tone is supported by-in summary-the fact that it looks like they did. Five Beyonce photos from the past are below; compare and contrast:
Chaunce Hayden, the random dude from Jersey who publishes the little-read but often-stolen-from gossip rag Steppin' Out, is really learning to play the retribution game! Page Six boss Richard Johnson angrily told off Chaunce after Chaunce gave him a bad tip about a radio shock jock fiancee's sex tape that got the Post sued for millions. But now Chaunce has gotten his revenge the gossip way-by giving rival gossip hack Shallon Lester from the Daily News a chance to trash Page Six as a dirty place that's out to "smear people and ruin people's lives." People like Chaunce Hayden, for example! Then Shallon talks about how everyone takes bribes. "Everyone" like Page Six (yes)? We haven't quite sorted out who we're backing in this war of too many words:
