In today's issue of New York Press, we have yet another analysis of the demise of Cargo. Something about consumer porn and shopping and getting back to the "real man" stuff.
Cargo, along with Stuff, Gear, the defunct Vitals and all those other butch one-syllable names (why didn’t someone just go direct to the heart of the matter and call one Boner?) all chased after the same market—the dreaded media-made monster homo metrosexualis.
We find this paragraph extremely, extremely puzzling. First off, neither Vitals nor Boner are one-syllable names. Secondly, we don't know what to fear more: a 'butch' men's mag or a "monster homo metrosexualis?"
Especially when we're still working on being comfortable around straight guys.
CONSUMPTION PORNOGRAPHY [Steve Weinstein, New York Press]
Yesterday afternoon, word hit the internet at full speed that Cargo, Conde Nast's shopping magazine for men, was terminated.
Its closing marks the third in a series of magalogs for men that have bitten the glossy dust — despite their Swiss army knives and cable knit sweaters, Fairchild's Vitals and Ziff Davis Media's Sync also faced a similar fate.
Perhaps marking the end of the metrosexual reader who picks out his clothes with little sticky tabs, when the plug was pulled on Cargo, it took down household name Ariel Foxman with it. Foxman had a rough stint over at Conde; he didn't want to put women on Cargo's cover, he didn't play the GQ/Details, 'gay or straight?' game, and perhaps most detrimental, he pissed of the big guns.
According to one insider, in December, Foxman showed up late to a holiday cocktail party Condé Nast chairman S.I. Newhouse Jr. held for the company's editors — a faux pas no employee who felt himself to be on the hot seat would presumably make.
Ouch. (Remember that folks, when you go to apply for your job at 4 Times Square.) Still, as naive as Foxman may have been, it's not easy selling magazines when your entire demographic is acting like a bunch of gruppie dumb shits.
Dumping Cargo [Jeff Bercovici, Sara James, WWD]
Condé Nast to Close Cargo Magazine [New York Times, AP]
