Mario Gomez and the Unleashing of German Football

German football (i.e., soccer) star Mario Gomez says that gay football players should just come on out and things will be much better – including their playing, because they'll be relieved from their stress of hiding.

If only.

Nonetheless, his comments are meant well, and I think we're getting very close to the time when being a gay football star will be nothing to shout about. At least in Germany.

(That's Gomez, BTW, on the cover of the German edition of Men's Health, in case you're wondering.)

Time to Praise -- or not -- Certain Magazine Editors

A couple of news bites regarding editors in action caught my attention.

First, there was a big round of promotions for leaders at Rodale, with many new positions, titles, and responsibilities handed out to deserving (we'll assume) employees. But, Jeff Bercovici reports, Men's Health editor David Zinczenko did not get promoted, and he's apparently not Mr. Popular at the office. Writes Bercovici: "No fresh plums were bestowed upon Zinczenko, who, in addition to being editor in chief of Men's Health, is also editorial director of its spin-off, Women's Health. In fact, his domain shrank this year when Best Life, another spin-off he helped midwife, went out of business. According to one longtime Rodale veteran, Zinczenko's status as the company's über-golden boy depended to a large degree on his close relationship with Murphy. It's hard to imagine the ridicule he incurred for using the same groupings of identically-worded cover lines over and over again for years on newsstand copies is doing his personal stock at the company much good."

A better-behaving editor (and at a magazine that serves humanity far more than does Men's Health) is SFX magazine editor Dave Golder, who -- SFX itself tweets -- won an award for Best Editor at his parent company's Future Publishing Awards.

Media Roundup: Spencer Pratt, James Warren, Realms of Fantasy, Tiger Woods & More

The latest dispatches from the fun, weird world of media:

• My problem with Men's Health magazine has always been that I'd be reading some item in it that says "People worry that XYZ causes ABC, but new research proves there's no correlation, so eat (or do) more XYZ." And if you're reading fast and lazy like most readers do (myself usually included), you might think XYZ is something you should start doing, and thank you very much Men's Health for the tip. But far too many times I'd be reading the item and I'd stop and think, "Who the heck has ever said XYZ causes ABC? They usually say it causes DEF [for lack of easily available letters]." So I don't read Men's Health. It's a magazine for lazy readers put together by lazy editors. Now, we have proof of it -- and proof that the editors are rather contemptuous of their lazy readers, too: the much-ballyhooed news that Men's Health had repeated -- word for freaking word -- almost every cover blurb on the current issue from previous issues. As Jeff Bercovici reports: "A source who used to work at Men's Health recalls sitting with [Editor in Chief David] Zinczenko and his top editors in cover meetings. 'They had a file of used cover lines and would just pick them somewhat randomly, with no regard for what was in the issue,' says the source. 'Occasionally they'd have to call some poor editor and ask something like, "Hey, is there anything in the issue that involves 792 sexy women confessing what turns them on?"'"
  
• It may have been a bad month for magazine launches in November, but there's at least one new one in December: Publication. Yes, that's the publication's name. Publication. This magazine, focused on street photography, includes a set of prints with the first issue.
  
• On second thought, maybe it's not so noble: Playgirl magazine, which is relaunching its print edition this month featuring those infamous Levi Johnston nude photos, has refused to run alleged nude pix of shamed golfer Tiger Woods. Was it an attack of ethics? No. The magazine's rep reportedly said they couldn't be 100-percent certain the photos were of Woods, so they passed them up. Which means, I guess, that they would have published them if they knew they depicted Mr. Woods. Well, you picks your battles.
• Is Huffington Post's James Warren no longer writing a magazine column on that site? I've read Warren's magazine columns for years, long before I ever even moved to Chicago, where he worked for the dailies. (No, loyal readers -- er, reader -- this is not the same James Warren of Warren Publications fame.) I always found his columns readable, intelligent, humorous, and interesting. Here's to hoping he's just on a long vacation.
  
• This week's sign of the apocalypse: Reality TV thing Spencer Pratt is, according to OK! Magazine, buying a record label.
• The new era of internet communications and British colonization of American newsstands has not been nice to most American science fiction and fantasy magazine publishers. But Realms of Fantasy is doing what it can to adapt. It's just launched a new web site and, perhaps most prominently, it features a promotion that lets you download a PDF of the current issue of the magazine.
  
• Only because Time magazine called it the Decade from Hell: Blogger Chris Roush shares the info that someone at Adweek's promoting Wired as the Magazine of the Decade.
  

My previous media roundup.

Magazine News Roundup: Levi Johnson, Creepy, Gay GOPers, Obamas on Covers, & More

Oh, what a week in magazines!

• Levi Johnson, the father of Sarah Palin's granddaughter, wrote an article in Vanity Fair that manages to surprise us even more -- and we thought we were immune to further Palinalia.
• Oh, and Levi Johnson is reportedly going to pose nude or semi-nude for Playgirl (presumably for its web site, because it ceased printing issues last year).
• Meanwhile, "actress" Linday Lohan has turned down nearly $1 million offered to her to pose nude for Playboy.
• The Obama takeover of America's publishing industry continues. One of the Obamas will be on covers of a number of Rodale magazines, including the newly launched Children's Health. President Obama will be the cover man of Men's Health's October issue. They will not be nude.
• Print magazines are dead, eh? Then why did a record 75 new titles launch in August? Huh, Mr./Ms. Smarty-Pants?
• Disgraced South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's wife Jenny does a tell-all in the September issue of Vogue. And it doesn't look good for him.
• Also, bad-boy Sanford is being tipped as the culprit behind rumors that Andre Bauer, his lt. governor and fellow Republican, is gay. It doesn't take a Ph.D. to figure this out: If Sanford is behind it, he's pretty clearly trying to scare off the easily-scared conservatives in the state government from forcing him out of office, because his position would then be filled by the presumably unfit-to-redecorate-the-governor's-mansion Bauer.
• Dark Horse Comics launched its new comics-size edition of former magazine-sized comics magazine Creepy. It's got all-new material; it's still continuing to publish its excellent hard-bound reprint editions collecting all of the original Warren Creepy magazines (and separately the Eerie magazines).

Star Trek Conquers the Newsstand, Part II

And more. Also read the review of the new movie from David McDonnell, longtime Starlog magazine editor.

Star Trek Film Conquers the Newsstand

The movie that's impossible to ignore (not that I'm trying) is J.J. Abrams' Star Trek, which opens this week. The movie's PR crew should be getting a big bonus this year, regardless of how the film does at the box office, because the photos of the new James Kirk and Spock and Uhura and others are plastered on the covers of many magazines, including some unexpected places.





More to come.

Best Life Dies

Rodale has killed Best Life magazine, a spinoff of Men's Health. (Really.)

Personally, I never saw the point to Best Life, beyond filling a business need by the publisher. But it did fill that niche for a few years, and last year it racked up impressive advertising increases. But for me -- eh. The magazine never seemed to do much on the newsstands. What does it have that Esquire, GQ, Playboy, and others don't already do?

And the cover lines? For heaven's sake. "Be a (Much) Better Father" and "Be a (Much) Better Man" and "Elegance Made Easy" and "The Best Drink in the World" -- this looks like the most conference-roomed editorial lineup around. Prepackaged and designed to hit the right newsstand sales tropes. All of which means it might have been a well-designed and written magazine (I dunno; was never interested enough to buy what looked like a personality-less magazine), but it's a second buy, not a must-buy for readers. Who identifies with a catalog?