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.

The Euro-Tizzy Over Guido Westerwelle and "The English Question"

Guido Westerwelle, the leader of Germany's Free Democratic Party and the likely new foreign minister for that country after the FDP and the conservative Christian Democratic Union won last weekend's elections, is under fire before he even takes office. It might be a sign of how opponents attack the government for the next four years: Don't go after the popular Chancellor Angela Merkel; target Westerwelle instead.

Why is he getting targeted now? No, it's not because he's openly gay. Thankfully, that is not raising eyebrows or ire in modern tolerant Deutschland.

The casus belli is Herr Westerwelle's remarks in his first post-election press conference, in which he refused to answer a question in English from a BBC reporter. He reportedly told the reporter that he'd be happy to have a discussion in English outside of the press conference, but in the press conference, "we're in Germany here."

There have been some commentators thrown into a tizzy by his response, acting as if he's the harbinger of a long-dormant radical German nationalism. That's silly. In fact, the real wingnut right-wing radical party in Germany, the National Democratic Party (NPD), did very poorly in this election, its support dropping.

Marius Ostrowski puts it into perspective. After all, the BBC sends a reporter to Berlin who doesn't speak English? That's, well, a very English thing to do.

Does anyone remember when George Bush reacted weirdly to being asked a question in French -- in France? Bush was wrong. Westerwelle might not have been the most politic in his response, but he's perfectly entitled to answer press questions -- where one wants to be sure that one picks one's words very carefully -- in the language in which one feels most secure.

Anyway, so Westerwelle's upset the Left, which didn't take much effort. Now wait until he upsets the Right: According to The Wall Street Journal, "The FDP, for instance, supports minority rights, higher immigration and curtailing the state's powers of surveillance. Mr. Westerwelle, who would be Germany's first openly gay foreign minister, has said he would cut development aid to countries that persecute gays."

Wow. A real libertarian!