As Neal Boulton tells it, he just called up Window Media president David Unger and said, "Let's relaunch Genre." A few brainstorming back-and-forths later, and the former Men's Fitness editor ends up taking over Genre magazine today. Or something.
Neal has already changed the out-going voicemail message on the line of Chris Ciompi, Genre's editor until this morning. (We checked in with him, who would only tell us he's in the middle of Harry Potter.) And even though Ciompi just closed the September issue last night, to Unger's approval, the bossman wanted him out right away. Ten minutes after Ciompi met with Unger, Boulton was in the door and celebrating with food all around.
So what's Boulton's course of action?
"I don't know if they're grand plans," he tells us. "Let's just build on what they're doing." And what is Genre doing? According to Neal, the magazine has a phenomenal 98 percent sell-thru and a circulation of 68,000. "I have an affinity for the subject for god's sake, after the whole Jann thing, and the bad jokes."
Indeed.
And how did a married-with-kids fella who became tied romantically to Rolling Stone's Jann Wenner, lost his top job at Men's Fitness, and dodged rumors of having a nervous breakdown that required hospitalization – all in the course of mere weeks – manage to wind up running a gay men's mag?
"I don't look at it as gay media. I look at it as media."
That just happens to feature half-naked guys on every other page.
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I hope he has better luck than I did when I was the EIC of Genre– talk about the worst experience of my life– the higher the circulation rose, the more my budget got cut– at least Neil doesn't have to deal with Richard Settles– that magazine has always had such great potential, but major baggage attached to it
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Breathing new life into an older mag is tough. I believe GENRE finally has the right formula. They needed to edit their staff and now they are on the right track. Now it is OUT's turn.
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