We rarely have much to say about Men's Journal, and that's for a couple reasons: 1) It's not Men's Health; 2) It's edited by Jann Wenner. Okay, Reason No. 2 should actually give us plenty reason to gab, so maybe it's just the single rationale.
But alas, someone with enough time to pour over Audit Bureau of Circulation data files a report with us that says Men's Journal's numbers dropped by 26 percent on the newsstand in '06. While total circ was 710k, 92,000 of that were "public placed." Sans those numbers, the book was actually 12 percent below the 700k rate base. Sounds like some make goods are in order.
What People always thought it was, TMZ is. Breaking stories the moment they happen. Inundating readers with enough photo and video clips and montages to make Madonna's concert opener jealous. Bringing the world more Harvey Levin. (Okay, so perhaps People never had that in mind.)
So it makes sense, then, that the tabloid magazines are wising up to this Internet craze and realizing, "Hey, they're stealing our readers! We should do something about that! Oh, what, there are no glossy pages? Well, maybe next year."
Star tried going bloggy in print, and you saw the field day of punchlines that incident caused. But now Wenner Media's Us Weekly is teaming up with Veoh – the video sharing site that isn't YouTube – to create its own celebrity channel.
That the deal also reunites Us-owner Jann Wenner and former-Us-investor-and-current-Veoh-moneybag Michael Eisner is, unto itself, just thrilling. We're nearly at Defcon 5 here, people.
Meanwhile, the new video channel launches next month and, according to whatever press release they're issuing, will of course amount to more than just a random smattering of Splash News paparazzi clips and sixth-graders lip-syncing to "Stars Are Blind." So in tune with You and Your needs and Your wants and Your desires, Us and Veoh are going to let the average person upload a celebrity-related clip to their channel.
According to Janice Min, the editor in chief of Us Weekly, Usmagazine.com and its Veoh channel will aim at a specific demographic group, rather than trying to directly challenge powerful online establishments like YouTube and TMZ.
“We’re the only celebrity Web site that really speaks to a very specific audience of women in their 20s and 30s,” she said. “As more competitors and the Internet cover celebrity, it’s only furthered the interest in celebrity. The appetite seems boundless.”
"Seems boundless?" If ever there were last words we ache to make famous, these are them.
But with all earnestness we can muster: Good luck with your little vlogging experiment!
Because unless Wenner quickly learns how to exploit UsMagazine.com editor Noelle Hancock like ABC News Now is doing Amanda Congdon, we fear the worst.
Exclusive
What's a little gay porn among friends? Jann Wenner apparently doesn't have a problem with it, though, truth be told, we're not sure whether we'd expect him to have a huge fucking problem with it or encourage all staffers to have a little homo smut on their resume. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.
Word arrived at Jossip HQ that frequent Jossip HQ punching bag (Us Weekly) could give Jossip HQ watercooler chatters more to talk about than Kitson lawsuits and publicist intimidation. Turns out, Us' newest high profile hire – Martha Flores, West Coast news director, working under West Coast exec editor Ken Baker – has a history in the fudge packing biz.
From what we understand, while Martha was still at the Los Angeles Times she put some money into Male Box DVD (NSFW), to help launch the Netflix-esque DVD delivery service that lets homos have their raunch flicks mailed to them in indiscriminate envelopes. After she left the LAT, she worked full-time at Male Box, which produces high-brow titles like Nacho Vidal In Face Fuckers, Black Hunks With White Punks, and Have Some Cannelloni, Tony. Then in the spring, Martha left the company (for reasons unknown), relaxed over the summer, then took up the job hunt in the fall — before finally landing, ahem, under Baker.
So are we about to start a major scan-dal? Unfortunately not. We hear Us Weekly was well aware of Martha's past. She even put her DVD days on her resume, and all parties involved had quite a nice chat about her background in making sure all of West Hollywood was stocked with their fetish films.
So no, no manpussy out of the bag — just an opportunity to prove we're mature by not putting "gay porn peddler" in the headline. Let's just chalk this one up to Wenner Media encouraging a, uh, a diverse workplace.
Most of you know Jill Ishkanian as the ex-Us Weekly staffer who started her own paparazzi agency and is under investigation by the FBI for allegedly hacking into Us' computers to glean information about celebs and their whereabouts. (The less sexy version of this story involves the Wenner Media tabloid forgetting to disable Jill's email account and her continuing to check it.)
But Jill (seen here at right, with former bosses Janice Min and Ken Baker) is more than a FBI case folder, the figurehead behind Sunset Photo and News, and business partners with Kitson owner Fraser Ross — which might have a little something to do with why there's so much fun going on between Kitson and Us. Jill is also the gal behind new web venture CelebrityBabylon.com. Refusing to call it a celebrity blog (and, to be fair, it looks to have more bells and navel rings than a typical blog), this "online magazine" is a decent mix of tabloid gossip, paparazzi photos, fashion and style commentary, and ego massaging.
Though the formal announcement about Celebrity Babylon is expected after the New Year, we checked in with Jill to see what the site is all about. And as Jill explains it, CB is all about synergy, baby: She's got the photos and gossip from her own paparazzi agency, so why be relegated to only one income stream (photo licensing) when she can be her own Perez Hilton?
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Exclusive
We hear Men's Journal just sacked deputy editor Ben Court. The Wenner Media title is making a huge shift in editorial focus, we're told, and moving away from Ben's specialty of adventure and travel and in the direction of a general interest men's magazine. Prepare yourself for regular features young starlets and premium liquors.
Why the shift? Newsstand is down 40 percent every since, ahem, Jann Wenner took over as editor-in-chief in November of last year.
This comes on the heels of Wenner ditching deputy editor Claire Martin under similar circumstances.
So who's replacing Ben? We're told it could be James Kaminsky, who's contract is expiring at corporate cousin Rolling Stone and might hop on over to turn Men's Journal into the next FHM.
Wise Decisions, 0; Jann Mistakes, 1.
Update: Claire Martin writes in to tell us she was not removed "under similar circumstances," but rather, she "decided to leave Men's Journal in order to move to Los Angeles, and I gave the magazine three months' notice of my decision to leave."
Because reality TV shows about magazines carry so much weight for you after Miss Seventeen, Rolling Stone's aptly titled I'm From Rolling Stone is leading up to the Jan. 7 debut of interns-on-cameras with its own blog – intern profiles! insider viewpoints! – and some cross promotion on corporate cousin Us Weekly's blog. Which – and we're surprised Jann would allow for this – actually hints at negativity:
We don’t actually know much about the interns, except that we once saw one of them actively wearing sunglasses indoors, which was all we needed to start rooting against her immediately.
But, since we don't think it's necessarily fair or ethical to root against just one intern, we're going to throw our wide-sweeping swath of disapproval across the whole bunch and wait to turn on the TV until 24 debuts.
Looks like Jann Wenner has timed his celebrity-friend butt munching just in time for the holidays. We hear the Wenner Media maestro has teamed up with BFF Bono, of U2, to put together a "(Red)" issue of Rolling Stone that will supposedly bring attention to the AIDS epidemic. Or sell more "Hamme(red)" shirts at the Gap.
The issue is expected to debut sometime this month, and Bono is a coverboy candidate, though that's not yet definite. Whether or not he's the face of the issue, we're told Bono does have a hand in editing the book — which, like most guest editing gigs, has little to do with Bono's journalism skills and more to do with Jann trying to impress his influential social network.
So look out for the all-red issue this month – it may even arrive in a red polybag or wrapper – and just be thankful this isn't yet another green issue. Saving the environment is so 2006.
• With Little Children as its news peg, New York magazine ponders whether the city's playgrounds are filled with the type of randy flirtation author Tom Perrotta dreamed up. Not looked into: Whether the city's playgrounds are filled with the child molesters Tom Perrotta dreamed up. [NY Mag]
• Kate Moss pregnant with an 8-ball Pete Doherty's baby. [Mirror]
• Maxim tyke Keith Blanchard finds a new gig at Wenner Media, where he's relaunching Jann's websites the way Alex Kuczynski did her face. [Memo Pad]
• Kurt Andersen – like Michael Wolff – requires too many words (among them, "contraindicator") to communicate the oft-voiced belief that the Los Angeles Times should be about, you know, Los Angeles. [NYM]
• Cost cutting at Hearst affects expensing lunches, not the 24/7 working waterfall. [Radar]
• A round-up of the magazine industry's worst covers wouldn't be complete without regular contributions from Jann Wenner's stable. [AdAge]
• From Gawker's ex-editor comes news of Gawker's new editor. [DI]
• Charlie Rose schmoozing with his interview subjects draws ire. If only he picked one of the less high-profile of his 20,000 interviewees to hob nob. [NYT]
• Perennial party crasher and Conde Nast impersonator Priyantha Silva finds a new home for his personalities at Hearst. [DI]
Exclusive
The Us Weekly-Jessica Meisels feud is coming to a boil ever since we broke news this morning about the Fingerprint publicist's wage war with the tabloid's Ken Baker. As we told you exclusively today, Meisels is trying to recoup the fees she amassed doing PR work for Baker's Head To Hollywood poker tourney charity event in June. She's only looking for a few hundred dollars – opting to charge only the actual costs accrued, and not her labor, given her work was done for a charity – but five months later, the Us west coast executive editor refuses to respond to her invoice.
Now we're told exclusively that Us Weekly launched a flack attack just after our story ran this A.M.. Janice Min & Co. are furious with Meisels and are threatening the PR player, hounding her with threatening phone calls.
Meanwhile, the mainstream gossips are picking up on the story: Richard Johnson's Page Six put a call in to Meisels today, but we're told she denied our report to the Post column, fearing Us' wrath. (Though you still might want to expect an item from Page Six in tomorrow's paper.) Further, we hear the Daily News' Lloyd Grove is also trying to get in on the story, but Meisels is pleading with him not to run anything — again, at the cost of upsetting Jann Wenner's tabloid.
And that's not where the story even comes close to ending. With all the sour PR image debt Ken Baker has attracted, we're also hearing the masthead colonel is on the job hunt. With his contract up in the near future (, he's putting in calls to other pubs, hoping someone will accept his CV.
Earlier: Ken Baker's Unpaid Debts Continue: Us Weekly Exec Ed's Charity Shakedown
Related: All Ken Baker and Us Weekly coverage
(Photos, L to R: Ken Baker and Carmen Electra at the June 3 poker event; Jessica Meisels at her birthday party with Nicky and Paris Hilton)
You know Kitson as the L.A. boutique that counts Nicky Hilton as both a supplier and a customer. The shop gets regular shout outs from the likes of Lindsay, Nicole, Jessica, and Paris, sealing its cultural relevance. You also know Kitson as store owned by Fraser Ross, who decided to capitalize on all the celebrity foot traffic and jump into the paparazzi business with Sunset Photo and News LLC — flanked by Jill Ishkanian, the former Us Weekly staffer now at the center of a federal investigation looking into whether she hacked her former employer's computers.
So, as you can tell, there's already bad blood between Kitson and the Wenner Media tabloid. And, as of yesterday, there's even more: Kitson filed a lawsuit against the gossip rag, alleging Janice Min & Co. violated written and oral agreements not to badmouth each other. And look at that — we've exclusively got the court documents.
Back in February, the bad blood between Kitson and Us – stemming from Ross hosting a book party for west coast exec editor Ken Baker, who supposedly didn't give enough editorial play in return – was settled with a $13,620 payment and a signed agreement between Ross and Us that the neither side was "to make, or knowingly cause to be made any statement or communication written or oral with the intention of (a) disparaging or otherwise impugnin the business or management of any of the Paries … (b) damaging the personal or business reputation of any of the parties … or (c) interfering with, impairing or disrupting the normal business operations of any of the Parties."
Turns out that was all a bunch of hooey, at least according to Kitson's lawsuit. The store claims the magazine went out of its way to crop Kitson goods out of photos it used (like a blue Kitson bag in Issue 593); listed the store's phone number (a number Us "knew or should have known is not answered") instead of its website, as is common practice for other retailers; and did not credit Kitson as the location where photos were taken that the magazine published, when it credited locations in other photos.
And Ross isn't done yet. He's also claiming Us engages in unfair business practices, allowing editors to plug their own goods (like staffer Suzanne Marchese's Fleur de Lis clothing) for free (the horror!); allowing editors to plug their own causes (like, ahem, Ken Baker's Head To Hollywood charity) without mention of the conflict of interest (double horror!); and editors demanding free merchandise from retailers under the threat that, if they don't send the goods, they'll never appear in the magazine again (triple threat, booyah!).
In the end, Kitson is assessing damages (read: lost business) at $10,000 per week. Which means Jann is gonna have to bring out the checkbook again, or Janice will have to make a little room in its "Get Insert-Celebrity-Here's Look!" pages for Kitson. (It's worth noting, meanwhile, that Kitson remains an advertiser in Us, at least as recently as the Sept. 4 Issue 603.)
After the jump: All the legal docs you've been waiting for.
Related: LA Shop Owners Want a Hand in the Paparazzi Jar
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Exclusive
Janet Jackson's June Us Weekly cover became the magazine's best-selling issue in its history — all while editor-in-chief Janice Min was on maternity leave. But it wasn't just Janet's 60-pound slimming that landed her on the cover. Rather, it was one of those editorial arrangements we've come to expect from media outlets with multiple properties to satisfy. While Time Warner stands by its story that Anderson Cooper's Angelina Jolie interview wasn't an arranged off-shoot of her agreement to give Time Warner's People magazine her baby photos, we're now hearing Janet's involvement with Us-owner Wenner Media includes a very strict agreement that also promises her the cover of Jann Wenner's Rolling Stone.
With a new album out, a Rolling Stone cover would be a nice boost for Janet's likely to be unimpressive album sales. But to get that elusive cover, Wenner required her to shill for tabloid baby Us Weekly.
Sound familiar? It should. Something similar happened to Nick Lachey when his album dropped. What was supposed to be an exclusive post-Jessica Simpson break up Rolling Stone cover story to coincide with his record's release turned into a beefcake Us Weekly cover — all because Wenner brass enforced Vanity Fair-like cover story requirements for Nick: Spill it all, or you'll be banished from the front.
The Janet-Wenner fallout is breaking now only because the American version of OK! magazine tried scoring an interview with Janet — and was summarily informed she'd be unavailable to chat, since she had an exclusive arrangement with Wenner.
We actually considered trying to confirm this completely un-fact-checked (and possibly 100 percent false, as well as very alleged) rumor about recently departed (fired? resigned?) Rolling Stone publisher Steve DeLuca. But even we have limits when it comes to phone calls; we were instructed at a very young age that dialing people you don't know and asking them about their genital area is considered, in some socities, to be rude.
It's quite amusing that the former publisher of Rollingstone Magazine, Steve DeLuca, acquired a rather large red dragon tatoo on his groin. It's rather appropriate considering his fetish for Asian women but could quite possible be a diversion for anyone noticing his extremely small penis.
We're not here to lay claim to whether DeLuca has a micropenis and, while we've heard of his Asian women preference plenty of times before, our real concern is that the possibiility he might have been inked with a red dragon. Asian-inspired tattoos? So 2002.
Congratulations to Janice MIn, who reportedly gave birth to baby boy yesterday. Unless the source had the reporting accuracy of, say, Us Weekly, and then there's a good chance she gave birth to a girl.
Because we had neither the tolerance nor the energy to make it to Jann Wenner's bastion of ego (otherwise known as Rolling Stone's 1000th issue party) last night at the Hammerstein Ballroom, we're relying on the always dependable, ever resilient, and stocked full of more mojo than we'll ever be community of bloggers for coverage. But only because Page Six already filed their copy for today.
• According to Talia got past past Wenner's PR goons – "Thanks to a VERY good friend, a cute shirt, a certain strategically placed mole, and some liquid confidence, I ended up inside this shin dig!" – all in time to catch Eddie Vedder's performance with The Strokes.
• Jerry reveals the "gift bags are awesome" and "drew barrymore was there drunk and nas was chillen."
• Simple Mission remembers the "free whiskey, a beer, a terrible cover of "Dance To The Music" by openers the Rolling Stone Cover Band and, um, the Strokes." That, and the exclusively 30-year-old-and-above crowd.
• Our favorite stories, of course, are from those who didn't have an associate at Us Weekly to sneak 'em on the list. Complains spinachdip nyc:
I was supposed to be at Hammerstein Ballroom. I was supposed to attending Rolling Stone's 1000th Issue Party. I was supposed to be rocking out to the Strokes and possibly Lou Reed, drinking for free, munching on finger food and picking up swag.
Yet here I am. Somebody fucked up my RSVP and there was no convincing the walkie talkie-wielding, navy-blazered thugs. I'm not that upset. I mean, I wish I were there and not here but this was a hookup. It's not like I paid anything. And at least I wasn't one of the many crashers who tried waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too hard to dress the part. Still, I'm madder than that time the grocery store didn't have Peanut Butter Chips Ahoys. That shit really pissed me off.
But fear not, I've handed my camera over to my trusty sidekick and told her to knock herself out. Not literally. I expect a full report on the debauchery with photographic evidence.
Atoosa Rubenstein waved the chance at joining the teenage agenda setting ranks on Miss Seventeen. Now the oft temerarious Jann Wenner, also in cahoots with MTV, is about to wave around not one but eight – eight! – Rolling Stone internships to a lucky mix of journalism hopefuls and music enthusiasts. Not because they'll make good writers, of course, but because they'll make good TV.
Thanks to a well-placed Wenner spy, here's what we understand about the reality show soon to tape at 1290 Sixth.
The candidate list has been narrowed down to 15 candidates, which will be chopped down to just eight spots in the coming weeks. The 15 finalists have been individually invited to tape a two-hour interview segment, which began yesterday and should finish up today. Interviews were originally scheduled to tape at MTV's studio, then got moved to the Park Central Hotel for reasons unknown (though we'll venture a guess that Tom Cruise's Scientology security detail, on hand for his TRL appearance, didn't want Wenner energy on the premises).
From here, the 30 hours of footage will be screened by a select group of staffers who will assist (in that Kent Brownridge sort of way) Jann in cutting all but the most aberrant to star in what's currently slugged Unititled Rolling Stone Show.
It sounds like Jann Wenner feels the pressure from Vanity Fair to start snagging super gossipy exclusives with recently dumped celebrities.
After supposedly being promised the cover of Rolling Stone, Nick Lachey agreed to sit down with reporters and dish on his split with Jessica Simpson. It's pretty pathetic that Rolling Stone is no longer featuring talented artists, but instead the gossip tabloids spill over.
And then when the not so musically talented artists/celebs/reality show stars don't dish enough, Us Weekly can scrape the covers off RS' cutting room floor.
Lachey, an insider said, gave an interview to Rolling Stone about the breakup of his marriage to Jessica Simpson, expecting the cover. "At the end of the day, Rolling Stone said he needed to dish more on Jessica and Joe Simpson," our source said. "Nick said no . . . in the dark of the night, Jann gave the photos and the interview to Us Weekly."
"It's absurd to dangle the cover in front of someone, and if it doesn't work out, just hand it to another magazine. We will think twice before dealing with Wenner again." A source added: "The Us Weekly issue [with an oiled-up, shirtless Lachey on the cover] sold really well in Chelsea, but that's about it. It was the gayest cover in years."
Yes, it is possible that this was Us Weekly's "gayest cover in years," but for Lachey, he still has that unfortunate Details cover to try and out-gay.
COVER SWITCH ENRAGES NICK [Page Six]
Jann Wenner already lost one irreplaceable (though some might argue otherwise) sidekick when Kent Brownridge ditched in December and stopped coming in even one day a week, as expected. Now's he's facing the departure of Mary MacDonald, perhaps the most revered personal assistant in publishing, who's been by his side for nearly 30 years. She's been the one keeping his serotonin levels healthy by organizing the staff's regular desk cleanings, not to mention handling other silly things like his calendar. But all that's about to end.
Now Mary Mac is leaving. Sources said she planned to take the summer off and then go into business for herself, possibly by opening a coffee shop on the Jersey Shore.
Where she'll spend her days on a wifi hotspot out-Lauren Weisbergering Lauren Weisberger. And wiping her ass with Men's Journal.
THEY'LL MISS MARY MAC [Jeff Bercovici, WWD]
Last month, we spewed the tale of Rolling Stone photo director Jodi Peckman, whose intra-office minglings got her fired back in 1998. History, of course, repeats itself — and she didn't abide by Jann Wenner's warnings to quit masquerading with then RS managing editor Sid Holt (who's now at VNU).
So where is Jodi now? An insider tells us she's still coming to work each day at 1290 Sixth and busies herself with convincing Jann that her romantic relationship with Holt is long over. Meanwhile, she's hunting for a gig with Corbis should Jann not take the bait.
Jann, however, isn't so pleased his lion's den is filled with loose lips, so he's had Wenner's IT guys hunting for the leak. And, well, he may have found it. The last email from our insider included only this very curt line:
Dont respond to this email address, Wenner IT has hacked into it
But surely if Wenner's SWAT team can access an anonymous free email account, they'd be able to troll through Jodi Peckman's outbox as well.
• Television news is obsessed with aging. Or, it could just be a projection of Alessandra Stanley’s inner fears. [NYT]
• First a street, now an institute. Peter Jennings can't even rest when in peace. [ABC]
• The FCC cracks down on Nicole Richie's fave four-lettered word, in order to get her to start liking the f word. You know, "food?" [Newsday]
• The only guy at the Chicago Tribune with a blog calls his co-workers a bunch of idiots. Really, what the shit is a bloggie anyway? [ChiTri]
• When it rains it pours. We'll take all the Wenner gossip we can get, even if for some reason it doesn't involve Steve DeLuca. [Gawker]
Since we've been covering the Steve DeLuca fallout at Rolling Stone, we thought it might be worth updating you on our other favorite Wenner Media scandal: the case of Gwen Cooper.
You remember Gwen from September, when rumor of the Wenner marketing staffer's South Beach fictionalized tell-all Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves: The Memoirs of a South Beach Party Girl began surfacing in publishing and media circles and set Rolling Stone's flacks-a-flaming.
Turns out – predictably – that when Cooper finally inked the paperwork for her manuscript, Wenner thought it'd be best to severe their relationship. It was Jan. 24 when the paperwork with Simon & Schuster imprint Simon Spotlight was signed (we're told Patrick Price, editor of last year's He's Just Not That Into You, will be heading the project) and, three days later on Jan. 27, Cooper was let go by Wenner CMO Gary Amstrong.
We asked Gwen how she felt about it. Like a true media-savvy pro, she issued this friendly response:
My three years at Wenner Media were a blast, but it's always been my dream to write a book. I'm just thrilled and amazed at how quickly everything has happened.
We thought about asking Wenner Media for an official comment, but we really don't want to distract them from all their DeLuca dealings. And either way, we're just pleased someone was let go from a publishing firm outside Ann Moore's way of doing things at Time Inc. Now can someone please update us on Jodi Peckman's status?
Related: All Gwen Cooper coverage
Editorial Director
