Media Roundup: Jimmy Jellinek Becomes God, Fangoria Previews Stephen King, & More

The latest and maybe greatest:

• Fangoria features an excerpt/preview of the exclusive article by Stephen King slated to run over its next two issues: "What's Scary." You can read the preview. Or come on, don't be a chump. Buy the mag!
  
• New York-based media dude Andrew Fox is claiming to be bidding on lad-mag Maxim, even reportedly telling the mags' owners that if they didn't sell, the magazine would close by spring 2010. The problem? Maxim says it hasn't received a bid and is not in talks for a sale. When writing about Maxim, we can include the obligatory sentence we use with every magazine these days: The magazine has seen a serious erosion in its advertising pages in the past year and it has suffered financial strains that have helped it lose much of the luster it once held in the marketplace.
• So The Advocate is no longer a stand-alone print magazine, right? Well, then why did the company just promote its EIC, Jon Barrett, to the new role of editorial director of Advocate Group, and why is he tasked with growing the brand in "print, online, and television iterations and the HIV Plus brand as well as SheWired.com and PlanetOut.com, which also now operate under The Advocate Group banner"?
• Giant magazine has ceased print publication and will now join the ethereal realm as an online-only brand, reports FishbowlNY.
• Also from Gotham's bowl-o-fish people, is this news that recently shuttered upscale foodie magazine Gourmet has extended itself inside a Condé Nast Epicurious app. Frankly, it's a widget.
• Playboy Editorial Director Jimmy Jellinek has been promoted to God Emperor of Dune -- no, wait, just to chief content officer, a newly created role in which he will oversee all content for the brand's print, online, mobile, TV, film, and radio efforts. Presumably this comes with a company car, an extra secretary, and an additional 30 hours in the day.
  

My previous media roundup.

Media Roundup: Starlog, Allure, Hillary, & More

The latest from the worlds of media, with a Starlog-heavy emphasis:

• On the off-chance that some of you read German, you can read the latest from Juiced.de about four new magazines that have launched, including Wir magazine.Yep, magazine launches continue.
  
• I'm happy to note that Starlog.com and Fangoria.com are no longer having any trouble loading in browsers. A Jedi's work is never done.
  
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• Speaking of Starlog and Fango, Starlog editor David McDonnell blogs over at Starlog.com about a short-lived magazine published by an earlier owner of Starlog and Fangoria. The magazine was a Playgirl competitor called Allure (no relation to the later women's fashion magazine of the same name). He gives some nice behind-the-scenes info on the magazine's life (which lasted less than a year), including the fact that the magazine was rather controversial in the small, multi-title company that generally focused on movies and TV. Apparently many editors and other employees had trouble with the "porno" title, which is rather funny, because there was very little actual nudity in the magazine (mind you, this was in the mid-1980s, when skin magazines still felt the need to be mostly articles, and Allure was no different), and what nudity there was was very mild. Despite the short life of the magazine, I know it was not for lack of trying; one of the publishers once told me about how much work they poured into it. But when the editor left (later becoming an editor at Playgirl, in fact), apparently sales were so weak that the publishers decided not to keep it alive, and it went "poof" into nonexistence.
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• In my recent posting here about the Hillary Clinton media blitz, I neglected an obvious example, the very recent Time magazine cover story by Joe Klein.
• We all know Condé Nast's had a rough year, like many other publishers. Word is that CN's looking to China to help it pull a turnaround, after a year when it closed some U.S. titles and reduced staff.
  

My previous media roundup.

Media Roundup: Life & Style Magazine, Bunny Icons, People People, & More

Oh, the fun continues:

• CNN has a report on the maybe/maybe-not romance stories that are slathered over the covers of the gossip-sisters mags at the checkout stands. The latest film to fuel this game? The New Moon franchise. The first to play the game? Life & Style magazine.
  
• Reuters has its take on the current news flare-up over a possible sale of the 56-year-old Playboy business. Reuters decides that the bunny icon -- the logo, that is -- is more valuable than the magazine, or the web sites, or the mail-order business, or the Chinese clothing stores, or the grotto. Mebbe, mebbe not.
  
• Would you like 45 million readers? Then get your keister over to Time Warner and buy People magazine -- the company, not the individual magazine copy. That's because Folio:'s reporting that People recorded a readership of a mind-boggling 45.1 million readers (counting pass-along readership; that's not its paid circulation). That's the kind of number that should only be recorded by like the official publication of the Chinese Communist Party or something like that. You know, the kind you can't unsubscribe to. Must be all those New Moon romance stories.
• Oprah's O magazine is in trouble? I bought my first-ever issueof O recently because, well, Ellen Degeneres was on the cover and she told me to buy it. It confirmed that I don't need to buy it ever again, but gay men are hardly O's prime demographic. But anywho, Keith Kelly over at the New Yawk Post makes out that the magazine is in dire straits and Hearst, the publication's owner, is making big changes to try to save it. I think he's over-stating the case, but it's interesting even if only partly true. I mean, does this suggest that Oprah can't do everything right? At least it lasted longer than Rosie magazine.
• I'm not sure I understand this. If the entire point of having Alaska boy-toy Levi Johnston pose nude was to help relaunch the print edition of Playgirl magazine, why are so many of the photos appearing online long before the magazine hits the stands? Let's face it: I'm sure the magazine's not going to be so full of scintillating prose by John Updike and exposes on Washington skulduggery that people will want it for any other reason.
  
• Fox News is flipping out over a magazine that answers teenagers' questions about sex and is actually available where teenagers can read it. Shocking.
• And, finally, we unveil the NUMBER ONE MOST NOTABLE MAGAZINE LAUNCH of the year (I got sick of doing the caps). It's Mr. Magazine's choice. Curious? Hungry to learn more? Salivating?
  

My previous media roundup.

Media Roundup: Condé Nast, Tribune vs. WSJ, Cult Newspapers, and More

The latest from the worlds of media:

• Politico's Michael Calderone reports that Newsweek is going through a round of layoffs. No word yet on who's leaving. But it makes this Newsweek blog from earlier this year about surviving layoffs rather interesting.
• Someplace that has also seen layoffs and other cutbacks, the luxury operation at Condé Nast, is also out with a report on its ad pages for the year, and it isn't pretty. According to The New York Times, the company's overall ad pages are down by a third, and "[t]he worst-hit magazines for the year were Architectural Digest, where ad pages fell 49.9 percent; W, where ad pages fell 46 percent; and Condé Nast Traveler, where pages fell 41.1 percent. Details and Wired both fell about 39 percent."
• The Chicago Tribune's Phil Rosenthal reports that The Wall Street Journal is looking into creating a Chicago edition, such as the one it recently launched in San Francisco (really the national edition with an occasional page of Bay Area-specific coverage). If it does do the new edition (and it probably will, because it's locked in a coast-to-coast battle with the similarly expanding New York Times), then the Trib has no one to blame but itself, as it has continually shrunk its ambitions and coverage and size under owner Sam Zell. When I was in college in the 1980s, I heard that the publisher of the two Madison, Wisconsin, dailies was asked why he didn't just combine them, in essence taking the smaller, money-losing one out of its misery. He replied that no way was he going to do that and open up a slot for the Milwaukee Journal to move in with a localized edition. Nature -- and Rupert Murdoch -- abhores a vacuum.
• Staying on the newspaper beat a little longer, we should note the bizarre goings-on at the Washington Times, the right-wing capital paper owned by cult leader Sun Myung-Moon. Long a disreputable also-ran paper in the nation's capital, the Times nonetheless became a darling of the conservatives and even -- strangely -- the Christian Right. Now, it appears to be "imploding," and that city is full of stories about the Moons' family feud, armed guards in the company offices, flight of top editors, and more. Huffington Post quotes one source as saying that Rev. Moon said, "The Washington Times has to take responsibility for people going to hell in America," he declared, referring to, among other sins, 'homosexuality and lesbianism.'" I guess no GLAAD Media Award for Sun Myung-Moon this year!
• Just to show that there is good news in the world of media, here's a report on a Purdue student who created his own magazine.
  
• And, finally, Jeff Bercovici reports that John King will host a new show to replace the departing Lou Dobbs. I think that's called trading up.
  

(My previous media roundup.)