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.

Twilight of the Lad Magazines, Part II

After 14 years, the UK edition of lad magazine Maxim is discontinuing its print existence and will become an online-only operation, reports The Guardian. The U.S. edition will expand its newsstand coverage to include the UK.

According to The Guardian's report, Maxim's circulation has been sliding for years, but it took a hit of more than 41 percent in the second half of 2008.

Also see "Twilight of the Lad Magazines" part I.

Magazine News: Twilight of the Lad Magazines?

The recession claimed another casualty recently, taking down music magazine Blender, part of the lad-magazine stable of Alpha Media Group.

In the same report, it was announced that Alpha's Maxim magazine would be merging editorial staffs with maxim.com, an increasingly common practice these days.

I know this doesn't mean the end of the British-inspired lad-magazine trend, but it does help highlight that it's no longer the "lad-magazine phenomenon." The laddie books have been on hard times in recent years, a far cry from when they exploded on the American newsstand scene and gave Playboy a run for its money.

But lad-book FHM ceased print publication in the United States two years ago, and it's been tough times for a number of these mags, which try to be salacious and tasteless but not pornographic. (Also see here.) For a good look at what these magazines hath wrought: Jon Zobenica wrote a great piece for Atlantic Monthly two years ago, noting the depressing difference between Playboy and the lad books when it came to treatment of women. People may love to criticize Playboy for its nudity, but Zobenica says it's a far healthier attitude than what transpires among the pages of the laddie books.

Dreamin'

So, as magazines close shop, lay off and scale back, perhaps it's a good time to think ahead to the golden years. The years of plenty, surplus, of rebound and growth and unicorns and elves. Whatever.
So what will the promised land look like? This world where we've gone through a brutal shaking-out of the publishing industry. Who will survive? Who will still put words to paper (and to pixels)? Who will be reaching millions of readers with ideas and art and entertainment?
We can make some safe assumptions. Some of you won't be there. If you work at a big magazine with giant expense accounts, huge budgets for photo shoots, people who bring snacks around on a tray -- get used to living like the rest of us. Figure out how to do a photo shoot with the office digital camera. Go get your own damn twinkie for a mid-afternoon snack. If you work for a small business-to-business magazine or association magazine, you already know what it's like to do the work of three people. Keep it up.
Maybe the future will hold personal helicopters and teleportation. Seriously. I'm a geek. I like that stuff. It could happen. Perhaps the magical elves and pixies will bring you coffee in the afternoon and you can use your newtype powers (and you get viel extra points if you knew the reference without clicking through to the Wikipedia definition -- I said I'm a geek) to conjure up story ideas and limousine rides to the publishing awards dinner. Maybe.
But I seriously think the next couple years will involve a lot of pain and re-evaluation by publishers. The folks who are still around will be either very perceptive and smart or very stupid. I always prefer the smart people. But money doesn't always follow smart (how else do you explain Maxim?). How can you survive? How can you launch and expand a publication in this new world?
Jokes aside, I think it's possible and I want to be one of the folks who's still standing, still publishing and still commenting on the editorial world several years from now. So watch this blog for further postings on this topic, and share your thoughts.
There will be magazines in the future. Will you be part of it?