Oh god, this is not a good sign. Prestigious, but previously free internships at Teen Vogue, Rolling Stone, and Vanity Fair are now be auctioned off at a Christie's celebration on Dec. 2nd.
The good news? You don't need to be a celebrity like Francis Bean Kobain or Sean Avery to intern at these previously exclusive mags anymore.
Bad news? Magazines are doing so bad right now that you have to pay to work at them for free. You'll really be missing that $4,000 you plunked down for the honor of getting Ms. Wintour her double caf skinny latte when you're too poor to pay off your college loans.
Oh, and in case you actually wanted to make money while working at a paper, would you consider moonlighting as a valet?
CONTINUED »
No, don't you see? Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee, so Jann Wenner is making a subtle political statement by making the candidate look like a braying donkey.
Jann Wenner's Rolling Stone is finally getting that slash-job we've been waiting for this month, but is reducing the over-sized Stone really making the smartest commercial choice for a financially-hemorrhaging company?
For forty years, RS has been identifiable by it's largess: its inability to fit on a normal-sized rack makes the glossy in a league of its own (well, along with W and V), but Jann's people say that cutting the magazine down to size won't change people's perceptions of Rolling Stone as an "outsider" read.
Um, who still thinks Rolling Stone represents a creative underclass, raise your hands:
CONTINUED »
While John McCain is spending his pre-election time infuriating talk show hosts with last-minute cancellations like the diva he is, Barack Obama is busy proving he's not that big of a deal.
Case in point: Obama's cover for Rolling Stone's July double issue edition sold pretty poorly with only 204,064 copies (the semi-annual double ish usually sells around 250,000).
The last time a summer double did that poorly was when Jessica Alba appeared on the cover in 2005, promoting the Fantastic Four. Maybe America is just not ready for ambiguously ethnic people on the cover of their Rolling Stone summer issues.
Rolling Stone, the increasingly terrible music magazine whose few pages of political coverage are now far more rock and roll than all of its rock and roll coverage, just released its What's So Funny? comedy issue, and it's already being crapped on, allegedly by an insider.
An anonymous person who claims to be one of the comedians highlighted in What's So Funny? sent a typed letter – complete with lots of spelling and grammatical issues – to the editors of RS admonishing them for their decision to cover bullshit, "gutless," "corporate" comedy acts. Judging by how many times Britney Spears has been on the cover of RS in the past decade, you'd think this "comedian" would have known by now that bullshit acts are kinda Rolling Stone's thing anymore. But no.
Oddly, for something that was supposedly written by a person whose job is to be witty, the letter sure is witless.
CONTINUED »
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 »
We've already seen the marketing genius behind Showtime's excellent serial thriller Dexter at work: Blood-flushing urinals, dead guys on the street, body parts in the butcher's display window.
To market the series' third season, which kicks off Sept. 28, Showtime has produced a series of Dexter magazine covers. We've got Rolling Stone here, and below, Wired. So they're marketing these to … savvy media types? Because general audiences are going to prefer more severed body parts.
CONTINUED »
Pastor Rick Warren was the guy who moderated the debates where McCain's cone of silence fell off. Now the popular evangelical with odd taste in facial hair is getting his own magazine with the Reader's Digest people. Maybe!
Everyone is keeping pretty mum about the possible project, which will center around the ideas he promotes in his book, A Purpose Driven Life, which you needn't read or even scan on Amazon to figure out its premise.
But with the magazine industry enjoying a massage from a cheese grater, will religious articles from the guy who thinks churches will solve AIDS be the injection that the flailing biz needs? Actually, yes:
CONTINUED »
Aw, cute! Hallmark Magazine is currently thriving in a veritable print depression, while every other magazine has cut corners. Rolling Stone is left scratching it's head and shrinking its size while circulation for Hallmark is expected to rise by another 100,000 units this year to bring in a total of 800,000 readers (double of what the mag started with in 2006). So why is a magazine that doesn't even put human beings on the cover all the time bitchslapping the competition? Several theories from the people that work there: CONTINUED »
The Knox and Vivienne Jolie-Pitt issue of People supposedly moved "only" 2.5 million newsstand copies, considered a disappointment for its share of a $14 million investment. The September issues of fashion glossies like Vogue and W have been dieting; they're hitting newsstands with fewer ad pages, when this month's editions are supposed to communicate heft.
Need more evidence the magazine industry should just throw in the towel?
Jann Wenner is taking Rolling Stone for a dip in the pool, and letting shrinkage kick in — he's cutting the book's signature size by 25.5 square inches. When the new Village Voice hit, we mistook it for an insert. What to think of the new Rolling Stone when its itsy-bitsy form hits newsstands in October? CONTINUED »
Because he still does not understand the power of Us Weekly, just its profit potential, Jann Wenner is willing to unload the tabloid, and Men's Journal, but reportedly wants to hang on to Rolling Stone, an ailing music title with declining circulation and ad pages. Nevermind that trying to sell Us for a rumored $750 million might be a little difficult in the middle of this credit crunch. And the fact that purported buyers, like the oh-so-reputable Conde Nast, would also find itself defending its sometimes-invented cover stories each week. [WWD]
If Graydon Carter's nervous laughter is to be believed, Conde Nast might be buying Rolling Stone, if only to prevent another Barack Obama cover that pulls from a non-exclusive photo shoot instead of an over-styled production that puts him in a Zegna suit — with style credit. [Folio]
Relays the Times about an exciting new print ad gimmick: "Rolling Stone and Men’s Health are both testing programs in which readers can take cameraphone pictures of icons on ads, then send them to a certain number. In exchange, they’ll receive more information or an offer from the advertiser.
"In Rolling Stone’s current issue, five advertisers are running these offers. They include a motorcycle ring tone for Allstate’s motorcycle-insurance program and a video preview of The Discovery Channel’s new season of Man vs. Wild. Men’s Health is going even further, saying each full-page advertisement in its July-August issue will have the added feature."
Wait a second. Haven't we seen something like this before? CONTINUED »
Spin magazine, which, honestly, we didn't know was still publishing, is the only major music magazine to see its ad page count grow in Q1. Everybody else is down year-over-year: Rolling Stone (27%), Blender (9%), and Vibe (19%). But even as these print rags see their ad budgets dwindle as media buyers move spends online, they remain overly confident in their own product. Says Blender publisher Ben Madden: "[Readers] need a credible guide. Nothing online can be that guide." Pitchfork, NME, and Stereogum would beg to differ, but then again, they have sustainable business models.
When Details publisher Chris Mitchell moved over to take the spot at Wired, it opened up the gig at Dan Peres' magazine. Filling the spot is Steve DeLuca, currently the associate publisher at Condé Nast Traveler. But remember when he was the publisher of Rolling Stone, and then ousted in 2006? Let's take a trip down memory lane, which includes more than a little job-costing spat with Jann Wenner. It involves Asian women, a small organ, and a tattoo. CONTINUED »
Regarding the cover of Rolling Stone's Barack Obama endorsement issue, Psychiatric Times' associate art director Paola DiMeglio says: "First reaction was that this looked like something from a Jehovah's witness 'The Watchtower' cover." [Folio]
Why is Rolling Stone going against its self-instilled grain by endorsing a candidate before the primaries have completely wrapped up? Well if you read the editorial, you would've already understood: "Undoing the damage of the disastrous Bush years will take a leader who can unite a deeply divided nation, and politicians with gifts like Obama’s are so rare that it’s imperative for each of us to do our part."
But anyhow, here's Rolling Stone executive editor Eric Bates explaining the decision on MSNBC today, where anchor Alex Witt will not let him forget that ROLLING STONE RUNS THE YOUTH VOTE OMG SRSLY$@#!
All that speculation that Us Weekly was going overboard in its support for Barack Obama … turned out to be entirely on target. Publisher Jann Wenner clearly has a soft spot for the senator; he's donated $3,150 to his campaign. But now he's going one step further.
For the first time in its 30-year history, Rolling Stone will endorse a candidate for president while the primary season is still going on. The magazine has endorsed White House hopefuls before (it started doing so in 1972), and regularly chooses Democrats, but only after the parties choose their nominees.
Now, RS is giving Barack Obama its stamp of approval, even though the battle between him and Hillary Clinton wages on.
"The reason for the early choice is twofold," write the editors in "Barack Obama: A New Hope." "Undoing the damage of the disastrous Bush years will take a leader who can unite a deeply divided nation, and politicians with gifts like Obama's are so rare that it's imperative for each of us to do our part."
So far, Rolling Stone has virtually ignored Hillary. But perhaps if she puts out an album, Clinton could at least score a blurb.
Is Us Weekly using its seven-figure circulation to launch a war against Hillary Clinton? That's the charge the New York Times is alleging given all the fawning Janice Min's tab has been doing over Barack Obama.
(The story comes two days after the Times admitted it got beat by another gossip charge, Matt Drudge, about the Prince Harry story, which the paper of record was completely in the dark about.)
Nevermind that Obama wouldn't answer an Us reporter's "Boxers or briefs?" question — Min & Co. totally have it in the bag for Barack, just like the rest of the media. How else to explain the tabloid's "Just like us" treatment with the presidential hopeful; here he is buying groceries, here he is playing with babies, here he is restoring America's good name abroad and providing health care for all Americans.
The Times' Richard Perez-Pena points to corporate cousin Rolling Stone, which ran an Obama feature last year but hasn't yet covered Clinton, as evidence of potential bias.
There's also some, uh, more concrete evidence, which Michael Calderone points to, like identifying the campaign Jann Wenner is donating to.
STONES, ROLLING After losing Rolling Stone executive editor Joe Levy to old foe Kent Brownridge and Alpha Media, Jann Wenner ups Eric Bates and Jason Fine to executive editor slots. [WWD]
Editorial Director
