"When anyone asks what you're up to these days, say you just came back from France. You're always 'just coming back' from France."
-Former Radar employee giving advice to unemployed brethren at last night's ASSME (American Society of Shitcanned Media Elite) party
Maer Roshan is understandably bitter. The one man who still believes there is a future for print and snark — together — has seen his baby Radar get shuttered, for the third time, by investors unwilling to hold out long enough to see red ink turn black. But rather than just lock out the staff (which they did) and fire everyone at once (that also happened), Radar overseers Ron Burkle and Yusaf Jackson quickly sold the website RadarOnline.com to American Media, the proprietors behind elementary school reading Star and the National Enquirer. If you've visited the website since, you'll quickly surmise you're not pageviewing through the same homepage that Roshan spit out. Under Enquirer editor David Perel, RadarOnline.com has been, well, Enquirer-ized, with trashy headlines and minutiae for stories. "It’s not the Web site I put out," Roshan tells the Observer. Which leads us to believe: Roshan would've been much happier if Burkle and Jackson just pulled the plug on the whole brand, rather than sell its scraps for pennies on the dollar to freakin' AMI.
Radar has fallen again: a sign of the times or just the annual event? Either way: the hipster snark 'zine can still be found in its online form (which curiously doesn't bring word of its own demise), which will hopefully continue through the recession.
Interesting side note: Lydia Hearst bashing of her family's name today, "It's time to work through this crisis, not party through it," never seemed more relevant.
Words to take to heart, from an unlikely source in a moment of sobriety sober clarity.
Update: American Media has bought the website, and will relaunch it in 2009. And they layed off everyone, including all their ex-Gawker employees!
Whoops, The Media, it looks like all your jobs have been outsourced to the Internet. While Notre Dame faculty held a conference for aspiring journalists to feed them lies like "If you can write well and gather news, you will always have a job," the current situation in the press rooms speak otherwise. Jobs are being cut (god forbid you are a movie critic these days), whole papers are folding (god forbid you are The Sun these days), and the industry in general is desperately lashing out at whatever available resource they can get their hands on to keep afloat. Unfortunately, that means grabbing up journalism students once they graduate and putting them in unpaid or minimally paid internships that go nowhere.
Unfortunately for the papes, there are some paying jobs for students out there, in the burgeoning and exciting field of blog writing! CONTINUED »
How appropriate that only one day after Newsweek editor Jonathan Alter lets fly just how shoddy Radar's reporting practices are, the new issue of Ron Burkle's favorite magazine arrives for us to find something to be appalled about heading into the weekend.
We've already shown you what to expect in this, the second issue of the mag's third life: Inside amateur Internet porn! Spider-Man 3 was expensive! Rufus Wainwright gives good interview! And, of course, Lindsay Lohan agreed to pose for us even though we barely devote any of the article to her!
So what actually went on this time around? A lot of "entry points" and "lists" and "sidebars," to speak in mag parlance: Where Bush administration officials go when their careers explode; analyzing Oprah's signature; pricing tell-all books from celebrity editors' assistants; celebrities giving the finger; worst places to die; hot guy in his underwear. Oh, wait, that was an ad.
What, then, was worth talking about?
CONTINUED »
From John Cook's hatchet job in Radar hatchet job (discussed here) on Adam Moss' New York magazine, an explanation from writer John Cook:
(Full disclosure: I once met with Moss to discuss potential employment at New York, I've pitched its editors and been rejected, the editor in chief of Radar used to work there, and my wife has written in its pages.)
That doesn't reek of "an agenda," does it?
All hail, the second issue of the third incarnation of Radar. This is the one where Lindsay Lohan agreed to do a photoshoot for the magazine, so she could really nail it to the paparazzi. Because she just hates when they're tailing her.
On Tuesday night, jewlery designer Waris Ahluwalia and his hosts threw a small fete in honor of Waris' debut collection. Naturally, we've never heard of him (then again, we're on fashion's D-list) but apparently this character is tight with big-names like Wes Anderson and his new collection is actually slated to be the next really big deal or whatever.
Anyhow, all the fashionistas (Hamish Bowles! Fran Leibowitz! Damon Dash!) toasted Waris by downing fancy cocktails at Bergdorf's, then continued the celebration with an elaborate sit-down dinner at the Indian Consulate. And that's where our story gets a little more interesting.
CONTINUED »
When Radar isn't whining about its treatment in the press, it's, well, whining about its treatment in the press.
Today's lead Page Six item – an entertaining, albeit non-game-changing item – about how Maer Roshan looks to Details for inspiration (information gleaned from a mistakenly left voicemail) was met with a retort from enterprising underling Jeff Bercovici directed at former Jossip editor and current Sixer Corynne Steindler.
Dear Corynne,
We're really sorry we couldn't make room for you at our launch party last week. It was a small venue, and, well, you know, fire codes and all. But we can't blame you for trying so hard to get in—it was really fun! Ask everyone you know.
Also, we're sorry we couldn't help you out last summer, when you asked one of us if we could get you a job here, or even some freelance work. To be honest, based on your poorly written, error-prone work at Jossip, we really didn't think you were qualified. But things worked out for you just fine, right?
Worked out? And how. While Corynne found herself a gig at the gossip bible, Bercovici landed at the third-time's-a-charm print blog and has managed to alienate nearly every friend-slash-source in his Treo.*
CONTINUED »
Bill Carter and Jacques Steinberg, in this morning's Times:
NBC’s dominance in television’s evening news race is undergoing its most serious challenge in a decade as “World News” on ABC scored its second ratings victory in the last three weeks. The figures highlight the slow but steady ascent of the veteran ABC newsman Charles Gibson toward the top position among news anchors.
In what is being widely interpreted as fallout from the shifting ratings picture, NBC has made plans to replace the executive producer of the network’s “Nightly News With Brian Williams,” according to several NBC executives.
Oh, wait, where did we hear that before?
CONTINUED »
Though Radar 3.0 isn't supposed to officially debut until tomorrow, a streetwalker reports the issue is already on the newsstand. A copy was purchased and perused as recently as this weekend at a kiosk on West 23rd.
In unrelated news, West 23rd suddenly has an unreasonably large litter problem. Clogged drains and such.
Oh, so you thought we were serious about not plugging away with the easy punchlines at Radar? Silly rabbit, truth is for kids. How are we expected to leave alone the career failure of a magazine when they leave themselves so wide open? Speaking to WWD about how they're going to ring in Round Three, the Wishful Thinker in Chief demonstrated how proficient he's become in producing his own spin.
[Maer Roshan] said a smaller New York party will probably follow the next week, though no date has been set. "You can have big parties and people will always pay attention to the party and not the product," said Roshan, adding, "A big, high-powered party like that — we'll wait until we have a few years under our belt."
Yes, it was always that we got so excited about Radar's LAUNCH PARTIES that we stopped giving a crap about the magazine. Yes, that was it. Or that the mag's own website would scoop itself. All of which was scooped by blogs written by 13-year-old Proactiv recipients.
A newly redesigned WWD.com had us giddy enough. But an article about Radar's third incarnation? It's like giving bread to the bread line: good news for everyone! Because like Maer Roshan and questionable numbers of bathroom trips during lunch, you just can't get enough Radar.
Radar is joining the socialite craze and taking a shot at tabloids like Us Weekly with the feature "Socialites Are Just Like Us!" in its first issue of its third incarnation (but with new investors). Yet, while Us Weekly captures stars in random moments, such as Ben Affleck making his way through an airport security line at LAX, Radar's February relaunch issue devotes 10 pages to overexposed socialites appearing in staged photos.
The cover of the third incarnation of Radar arrives via Gawker and, well, looks awfully familiar to a couple other pubs we've seen around town.
When Jeff Bercovici sat down for lunch with Jon Friedman on Monday, he inevitably knew his name would end up right here. And when Jon Friedman sat down for lunch with Jeff Bercovici on Monday, he, also, knew his name would end up right here. So now that we've got our meta fetishes out of the way, let's have a go at what Jon Friedman does best: fawn over his media subjects. In this case, it's Bercovici, the "scoopmeister." (Words like that can tell you where this is going.)
It's not that we can't keep a straight face while skimming the bit about Jeff's "devotion to reporting news" rather than "not merely recycling the latest bit of celebrity gossip" – because in this instance, Jeff's "celebrities" are media figures, and that doesn't make it news … if it did, we'd be Brian Fucking Williams – it's this line:
Media blogs have written about Bercovici, which can feel like a dubious distinction at times. "I am constantly astounded that the bloggers think I'm someone their readers want to see in print," he told me.
Astounded? Like the way Nick Denton and Rupert Murdoch and Dave Zinczenko pretend to be?
This, from a guy who made his name at Women's Wear Daily Memo Pad column, writing about prominent media figures, then jumps to media punching bag of a magazine Radar, where his job includes roasting Graydon Carter and, in a faux-clusive, exposing Justin Timberlake and Cameron Diaz's real estate broker as an ex-porn star. (And wait, what was that about not trafficking in celebrity gossip?)
Yes, it just boggles the mind why media blogs would be interested in documenting the rise and fall of Bercovici. Beside, it's not like Maer Roshan was caught powdering himself in the bathroom this week … we need something to go on.
• Ah hah, so that's how Radar gets its exclusives.
• A couple dozen Time Inc. layoffs should be no reason to have your holiday ruined
• Star Jones fesses up to being the diva we always knew she was.
• What do you get for the octogenarian who has everything? Whale vomit, obvi!
• A Very Un-Brady Christmas: Bridget Moynahan to purchase Frizz Ease, find rebound-guy.
• Angelina Jolie to paparazzi: Get your wide-angle, ultra-telephoto zoom lenses off my adopted family.
CONTINUED »
As the New York media bubble – and virtually nobody else – gets giddy over February's third Pheonix rising of Radar, it's become time to quiz the magazine one just what we can expect this time.
"The only difference now is that we have an investor" — or investors —"who believes in it," said founder Maer Roshan.
When asked for comment, Harvey Weinstein said "I did believe in it, for an entire two issues," while Mort Zuckerman and Jeffery Epstein said, "We believed it in, too. We believed it had a chance of succeeding."
• The guy behind the white powder envelopes that caused Keith Olbermann, among others, to freak out has been indicted.
• Today show clocks 11th consecutive year as the morning leader.
• Fox bets on Salma Hayek to repeat Ugly Betty's success.
• A how-to guide on how to write for Radar. The "not get paid" part is self-explanatory.
• Print out those resumes and sharpen those business cards, because magazine holiday parties are the place to network.
• Remember when TVNewser prided itself on not spreading salacious gossip? Turns out there's a fine line between rumor mongering and warning of imminent disaster.
• Glad we've got a timeline in place for calling Augusten Burroughs the next James Frey.
• Liz Spiers launching blog aimed at the jet setting CEO/FO/OO crowd. Also, a new blog for pot smokers.
• ABC pays News Corp. $1m kill fee for O.J. Simpson interview that Barbara Walters passed on, giving Judith Regan some much needed buffer room for that little financial fiasco.
• IvyGate fosters healthy father-son relationships: The blog's founder and his Boston Globe-columnist father share stories.
• Maer Roshan was just begging to be called out on his latest ego trip.
• Steve Florio leaves his Conde Nast executive suite for the Conde Nast cafeteria. Or something like that.
• Bidders for Tribune's assets aren't offering enough cash, forcing the company to take some time to think of clever ponzi schemes to make up the rest.
• With the city's most famous party crasher in attendance, it's nice to see Jon Friedman get the headlining love.
• If you ask Internet entrepreneuers what they'd do if they had their own newspaper, of course they're going to say something about going digital.
• Portfolio poaching always requires a mention.
Radar is back, even if, you know, it's not really back, but only exists as a domain name and varying levels of truthiness. But it's coming back, in the "increasingly relevant" form of a print magazine. Which means editor Maer Roshan and his shady consortium of financial backers are hoping you'll fill out an antinquated business reply mail card, toss it in the post, and wait 4-6 weeks for a new stream of junk mail from a a magazine that – let's be honest here – was lucky enough to have two incarnations. Forthwith, the note going out to past subscribers of Radar, attached to said mailer asking for your demographic details and email address, with promises to send "special gifts and prizes." Like "v1@grA" and "w31ght l0$$ p1LL$."
