 |
|
|
|
||
What do public opinion polls mean? Talk about the science of popular opinion in the Media area of Table Talk ___________________ Do you have you ear to the ground? Check out
barnesandnoble.com's up-to-the-minute new releases!
R E C E N T L Y
Revolt of the elitists The man without principles Truth in advertising Wall Street Journal personals work! A battle for the soul of America BROWSE THE
|
WILLS TO SHEEHY: YOUR CLINTON-INCEST PSYCHOBABBLE GROWS TIRESOME | PAGE 1, 2
It is good to know that the better class of men's mags will remain resolutely on the high road, but a Details staffer who, fearing for his job, asked to remain anonymous, sung a different tune: "The editorial vision at Details is to copy Maxim." Here's another: "Maxim scared the daylights out of everybody here. We definitely noticed when Maxim said their rate base would soon be equal to ours ... our covers reflect that." And do check out those recent Esquire (Pamela Anderson), Details (Elizabeth Hurley in a skin-tight top) and GQ (Heidi Klum in a bikini) covers. You can't blame the editors at the other men's mags for distinguishing themselves from Maxim. Each clearly has literary, journalistic aspirations Maxim does not share. Maxim is basically Cosmo for men; its intended dude seems to be honestly clueless about how, in the post-feminist era, he is supposed to behave in stores and social situations and with women. If GQ, Esquire and Details provide worldly insight to an already sophisticated audience, Maxim lets unmade men know what's what. As Cooper says, there is "nothing in Maxim that will cause an original thought to cross a reader's mind." Conceding that you'd have to be "sort of dumb" not to notice that it's harder and harder to stand out on the newsstand, and sex is a good if obvious way to sell magazines (or anything else), Caruso says, "We're in a very sexy age. Sex is selling big-time -- in magazines, advertising, TV, everything. Maybe it's millennnial. Maybe we're just all horny now." Sounding a bit like Maxim's ideal frat-boy reader, he adds, "I'm for that." Depending on how you look at it, here's some scary or exciting news: a Maxim spin-off is set to launch this spring. Stuff, a magazine for a slightly older reader that's mostly about products, plans four American issues this year. The toys-for-boys rag already has a big following among British blokes. Stephen Colvin, president of Dennis Publishing LTD, which publishes Maxim and Stuff, says the magazine "is for the guy who has dough in his pocket and wants to enjoy himself." He promises that Stuff -- a test issue of which featured pieces on radar detectors, voice recognition software, gift extravaganzas that will keep her coming back for more and the next generation of silent-but-deadly stealth warplanes -- will have the same irreverent tone as Maxim. That's not all. A source close to Stuff's launch says the real reason for the spin-off -- beside the two-ad-buy advantage -- is that Dennis Publishing is embarking on a bit of a scorched-earth plan prior to the launch of FHM, Britain's wildly popular (or, as Newsweek put it, babe-intensive) magazine. FHM will bob up on these shores in the second half of this year. Two more mags, full of birds, bitters, gadgets! How many breasts can squeeze on a magazine cover? We'll soon see. SOS! Doesn't anyone want to edit Mother Jones? Any editors interested in taking over floundering Mother Jones? Apparently not. The leftist glossy has been without a permanent editor since Jeffrey Klein's departure in October and doesn't seem to have settled on any interested, viable candidates. San Francisco is a fine city, Mother Jones has a record of good investigative journalism. So what, exactly, is the problem? At least a dozen candidates have been approached for the job. Early in the process, National Journal writer Michael Kelly and Slate editor Jack Shafer were said to be dream candidates. L.A. Weekly editor Sue Horton was a later, apparently more plausible contender. The board has spoken to a long list of other would-be editors, including investigative reporter Monte Paulsen, Nation editor Art Winslow, NPR foreign editor Loren Jenkins and New York Observer and Salon contributor Joe Conason. "They're broad-minded to the point of having no mind," a source close to the search said of the magazine's seemingly scattershot selection process. "I don't want to live in San Francisco. I don't know anyone who reads the magazine. It's a totally uphill thing," said a would-be candidate, more or less echoing reasons cited by other potential editors. Several people involved in the editorial search said the magazine had lost its focus. "It can't seem to keep track of what its main schtick is," said one source. The magazine's financial situation does not seem to have helped matters. Any would-be editor would want assurances that there is a strong financial commitment on the part of Mother Jones' heretofore die-hard board members. Though one candidate who withdrew her name from consideration says she got far enough along in the process to gain some optimism about the magazine's finances, others were less certain and voiced discomfort about the prospect of having to do fund-raising as well as inevitable editorial cutbacks. Worries about whether the magazine's activist board would interfere has compounded the search committee's troubles. One source said that the search did not get under way until September, even though Mother Jones brass knew in August that Klein was leaving. The mailing the magazine undertook, which involved sending job postings to editors on mastheads of several magazines, including Brill's Content, apparently did not advance the search. Though the board wanted to have an editor or strong candidates in place before its meeting in early February, that doesn't seem likely. A source involved in the search decried the board's lack of energetic leadership, noting that publishing without an editor for too long is likely to be fatal for a magazine. Jay Harris, Mother Jones' publisher, denies that the search has been floundering. "The search is on track," Harris said. "Jeffrey Klein left in October. Patty Wolter, our former managing editor, is acting editor and we've planned the search to culminate in a board meeting in February. Things appear to be on track. It's premature to give a time frame, but I'm very confident that we will have a great new editor of Mother Jones. There's been very strong interest in the job from very well-qualified people. We began the search in earnest before Jeffrey left. There was a slow period during the holidays, but in the grand scheme of things, where you have a position that's not only editor in chief but one of the senior officers of the nonprofit foundation, it isn't an unusually long search." Is Mother Jones' financial situation scaring off potential candidates? "Mother Jones' financial difficulties aren't particularly different from those of a lot of other publications and Web sites," Harris said. "We've got a strong board of directors that has made unprecedented pledges of support. Mother Jones has been around for 23 years now and it's not going away. Any editor is going to be looking at the resources available for him or her to do the job. We've definitely fielded those questions, but we've been able to provide pretty reassuring answers." Harris also denied that the board would intervene editorially, saying that "It is in the bylaws that the editor in chief has final authority, without qualifications." As for the issue of Mother Jones' uncertain identity in the late '90s, Harris said, "There are a couple of really important traditions in the magazine -- political progressivism, and daring investigative reporting. Any new editor needs to understand that legacy that they're inheriting. And then, given the political situation, given the checkout of vast numbers of the public from traditional politics, to chart a course for Mother Jones within that. That's a big job." Here's one for Brill's Content: The January Elle includes a short piece about the changing relationships between mothers and daughters. The story, which concludes that the gap between mothers and daughters has recently closed a bit, centers around what Elle calls "a groundbreaking study" by Yankelovich Partners, commissioned by Clinique. The story ends with mothers and daughters both remembering buying the same cosmetics brand. You guessed it -- Clinique! This ought to win some sort of prize in the over-the-top egregious
conflict department.
Susan Lehman's Media Circus column appears every Thursday.
Maximum confusion On the Web, a typo throws frat boys and feminists onto each other's turf.
|
|
Arts & Entertainment | Books | Comics | Life | News | People
Politics | Sex | Tech & Business | Audio
The Free Software Project | The Movie Page
Letters | Columnists | Salon Plus
Copyright © 2000 Salon.com All rights reserved.
![[Salon Magazine]](/media/src/salon_logo.gif){kind=logo}