New York Post Exposes ... Obama's Vacation Clothes

Wow. Talk about a slow news day at the right-wing New York Post. Check out its cover below, which was assembled by editors who thought this was the most significant news of the day.

And no, I don't think there's anything wrong with what Obama is wearing. And I'm 99 percent certain that neither you nor anyone else thought that, either, and this is another of those entirely manufactured controversies that certain media players concoct to give their talking (and writing) heads something to blather on about.

Playboy for Sale? For $300 Million, Perhaps

The New York Post's magazine columnist Keith Kelly reports that the Playboy empire "is quietly being shopped around for $300 million," but there haven't yet been any takers. If Kelly's report (based on his industry sources) is true, then earlier suggestions that all that sale talk wasn't real was itself not real.

Playboy Enterprises Inc. interim Chair/CEO Jerome Kern hasn't, of course, contacted me to buy the company (an oversight, I'm sure) (though, come to think of it, he also didn't contact me about the search for a permanent replacement for former Chair/CEO Christie Hefner; hmmmm...), but there's got to be a buyer out there somewhere for this. (Remember all the interest in acquiring Penthouse from bankruptcy, and that company was a basket case? Playboy's not.) My guess is that the challenge will be finding a buyer or investor who can work the ownership and editorial needs of Hugh Hefner, who still owns most of the voting shares (and whom Kelly says recently lamented taking his company public in the 1970s as his biggest regret).

Update: Playboy spokesperson denies the company's being shopped around, according to Crain's Chicago Business. So are Keith Kelly's sources full of hot air or is Playboy trying to keep it ultra-quiet?

Magazine news: Help! I'm Shrinking!

Like the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz, the magazine industry is getting smaller and smaller.

Okay, that's an exaggeration, but it is shrinking, and I really wanted to get the Wicked Witch thing in there. (Go ahead, click on the link above; it's worth it.)

Anyway, the New York Post's Keith J. Kelly says the magazine industry is becoming like Germany or other advanced Euro economies, whose populations are declining because births and immigration are outnumbered by deaths. (Okay, he didn't use the Europe-as-magazine-industry analogy, I did. But I'm trying to offer something for the people who didn't climb aboard for the Wicked Witch thing.)

The point is, as Kelly writes, "For the first time in memory, the magazine death rate has surpassed the magazine birth rate." He's referring to the vicious slaughterhouse that was the publishing economy of the first quarter of this year, in which the number of magazines that died just slightly outnumbered the new-birth rate.

It's sort of like ...

The New Proletariat at Condé Nast

As noted in an earlier post here, the lifestyles of the rich and famous editors and publishers at Condé Nast are taking a bit of a hit as the company tightens its belt and puts the stop to some well-loved perks.

Now Keith Kelly writes at the New York Post that some Condé Nast executives are riding the subway instead of taking their royal rights of having a car driven for them. This is, supposedly, a big sign of sacrifice by them.

But, having ridden the Manhattan subway every day for nearly two years in the early part of this decade, I can report that it's hardly a place to go slumming. It's the only subway I've ridden that typically fills up its cars with the poor and the middle class and the rich alike, of all races. I suppose if I knew then that I could bump into a Condé Nast editor on my morning commute, I might have kept a packet of resumes in my bookbag.

Condé Nast Hit Hard

The usually high-flying Condé Nast publishing empire has hit some severe turbulence as its stable of luxury goods advertisers cuts back on spending, reports the New York Post's Keith J. Kelly. With Portfolio and Wired both down about 60 percent in advertising (the industry norm lately is much less), things are serious.

Quoting publishing people who say Condé's "overstaffed and overpaid," Kelly notes, " Much of the problem rests with Condé's policy of never discounting off the rate card.'Advertisers are finding that they can buy around them,' said [a] former executive."


It is, of course, pretty easy to change a policy about rate card negotiation -- assuming there's not a big mental block on the matter among the company's leaders. But serious economic times have a way of changing things.