Last month, it was just Wired and Rolling Stone that the marketing kiddies behind Dexter showed the world. Now, a full-blown newsstand: The New Yorker (with a cover from actual New Yorker illustrator Edward Sorel), GQ, and Esquire get the treatment. This comes, supposedly, on the heels of a marketing trend, where advertisers are using mock magazines to push their product — even though print is dying and everyone is using The Twitter! CONTINUED »
To pull off its blinking September cover, Esquire will implement microcapsules filled with pigment that are thinner than a human hair that, when juiced with a slight electrical charge, produce an image on the top of the surface. Just so you know how much trouble David Granger went through to make the most obnoxious magazine to hit newsstands ever.
It took only a six-figure investment, a Chinese engineer making a special battery, manufacturing gurus in Texas and Ohio, and sponsorship from Ford for Esquire to move forward with plans to turn your local newsstand into the flashing nightmare that is Times Square.
To celebrate his magazine's 75th anniversary, David Granger (claims to have) dreamed up the idea to produce an electronic cover. Now, it will be revealed, with 100,000 copies hitting newsstands in September with an embedded battery to power a slim display screen.
Reserving an exclusive license from E Ink (the same guys behind Amazon's Kindle), Esquire's flashing front will blink "the 21st Century Begins Now." Not only will the cover be 100 percent annoying, it'll also be eight years late — and, by the time you get around to fishing the issue out of a stack of unread magazines five years from now, vintage.
How many Barack Obama magazine covers can qualify as rip-offs this week? So far, our tally is at two. CONTINUED »
George Clooney had the Hearst girls in a tizzy when he arrived in the lobby to shoot a spread for Esquire. [P6]
Esquire, which had the proud honor of publishing the most terrible celebrity profile in Terrible Celebrity Profile History, might also has the honor of only being nominated for a single category at this year's National Magazine Awards. David Granger's pub is usually up for a whole slew of awards, but one rumor going around is that they're being shunned in this, they're 75th year of publication. Official confirmation, sponsored by Kleenex, will arrive tomorrow.
From the book of terrible ideas comes Lisa Taddeo's account of Heath Ledger's last days. Published in the April issue of Esquire, on stands next week, "The Last Days of Heath Ledger" is a first-person diary of lunching with Jack Nicholson and partying at the Beatrice Inn in the final days before the actor's death.
Except it's not true.
The Times Tim Arango reports editor David Granger – who "didn’t understand what the fuss was all about" when Ledger died – always intended the piece to be a work of fiction, not an assignment to report the facts that turned up empty. (Taddeo, an associate editor at Golf Magazine, does include some facts, like Ledger's enjoyment of "banana nut muffins from Miro Café.")
Though a quick look through Esquire's history reveals this stunt fits in with the magazine "record of journalistic tomfoolery," we can't imagine the Hollywood elite are going to care too much for it. And we all know what happens when the press tries to exploit celebrity death.
As Google Docs told me this morning, it's Valentine's Day. Valentine's Day isn't a big deal, but it is a reminder that when I go to sleep at 9:30pm on a Saturday night–which only happened once, after a long day at a Russian bathhouse–no one really notices.
Last time I visited my grandmother in Florida, she asked me what my type was. Rich and tall is trite, right? I kid, I kid. I don't even have a type. So I decided to be proactive and look through men's magazines to figure out what I'm looking for. What I learned? Men are idiots. After the jump, my brief flings with Details, Maxim, Men's Vogue, GQ and Esquire.
Anyway, happy Valentine's Day!- raronauer
RAAB'S REBUTTAL Esquire has been accused of many things. Publishing shitty celebrity profiles among them. But its supposed-to-be-serious coverage of reconstructing Ground Zero has been attacked by the likes of the Columbia Journalism Review, which accused the magazine's Scott Raab – along with The Financial Times and the New York Post – of going too soft on developer Larry Silverstein. Herewith, the rebuttal, where Raab argues his 30,000 words on the subject did not include getting played "like a circus organ" by Silverstein's publicist Howard Rubenstein. (As for the Post? Given its publicist is also Rubenstein, well, then perhaps.)
Well, to put it in a context, I think I'm not the only one who's noticed the way magazines have given up, basically, their covers to celebrity P.R. people who dictate photographers, they dictate what reporters are allowed to report. If the profile is not fawning, that reporter's out on his ear as far as reporting on any other celebrities.
And this particular profile of Angelina Jolie, which called her "the best woman in the world" — sort of epitomized the low point of fawning for access, the pretension of it, with all sort of pseudo-deep-think about the nature of celebrity and how Angelina Jolie is really an underdog and she identifies with the underdog … And what do they get for it? They get Angelina Jolie to pose naked with a sheet so they can put that on the cover. They get basically no information. The fraudulence of it, finally, I don't know.
–Slate columnist Ron Rosenbaum, on the growing trend of magazines sacrificing journalistic autonomy for access [via OnTheMedia]
"Rosenbaum's reluctance to personalize his critique of the worst celebrity profile ever written achieved precisely the opposite of what he intended," writes Slate's Tim Noah of colleague Ron Rosenbaum's semi-agog-worthy critique of Esquire's Angelina Jolie coverstory.
That is: Ron left out the author's name of sad shitty Esquire celeb profile.
Who is he? Tom Junod, and he's usually seen covering some political realm, where he, like, shines and stuff. It also means he commands more than $2 per word, so it's likely those crappy celebrity profiles will continue so long as David Granger orders them up.
In the wake of Angelina Jolie's bout with restrictions on the press, Slate's Ron Rosenbaum calls out Esquire for publishing the biggest hack of a celebrity profile … perhaps ever written. (We read the first half, and it's true.) Slate's criticism: Two parts "awesome," six parts "too long," and thirty-four parts "advice that will never be heeded by glossy magazine editors."
Leave it to David Granger at Hearst's Esquire to rib Graydon Carter at Conde Nast's Vanity Fair. Or, at least, rib Bono, who's "guest editing" VF and producing some 20 different editions in a game of "cover telephone." But what, wonders Granger's team, would happen if Bono took his do-gooding to magazines aimed at children and folks stuck on airplanes?
In the June issue of Esquire, a gaggle of intrepid journalist-slash-alcoholics put together a comprehensive list of NYC's hottest bars. The culmination of their collaborative efforts? A wide-reaching plethra of watering holes that we weren't cool enough to have frequented (or even heard of) though our Dad swears they're "top-notch!"
The aforementioned bars stretch from 42nd to Hoyt St. in Brooklyn—which impressed us until we quickly remembered that Esquire writers never venture out of midtown Manhattan—and their list included such underground gems as Minetta Tavern, Flatiron Lounge, San Domenico restaurant, and the Bar at Keen Steakhouse. And we were trying to figure out what all these places had in common (besides being semi-overpriced restaurants) when we finally hit upon it: they're all for stuffy, middle-aged men!
So, in honor of "Where We're Drinking in New York: Esquire Edition," we hereby present "Where We're Drinking in New York: Jossip Edition" instead. Although, for the record, we think most bars are over-hyped, overpriced and overrated. Not because we're snotty and elitist but because we're really, really poor.
Intern Joseph's picks, after the jump!
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Remember when Bonnie Fuller thought it'd be a good idea to have her staff peaking out from the pages of Star to deliver unwitty commentary with bizarre facial expressions?
We've got something that's at least 38 percent as bad.
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Editorial Director
