Mr. Media Interviews by Bob Andelman
Friday, September 14, 2007
Bob Guccione Jr., "Spin Magazine" publisher: Mr. Media Classic
Originally Published October 14, 1996
Bob Guccione Jr. has come a long way in 11 years as editor and publisher of Spin magazine. A decade ago, he oversaw every word, every photo before it saw print, spending more time as editor than publisher.
"Today," he says, "I'm in the happy position of being a publisher who reads the magazine when it is published." And, he adds, "It's somewhat humbling that the magazine gets better the less I have to do with it."
To put Spin's history in perspective, consider the hoots of laughter when another famous Junior, John Kennedy, announced his plans to publish George magazine a year ago. (More about that below.) Guccione Jr., 41, despite being the son of Penthouse magazine publisher Bob Guccione, met the same kind of skepticism. His route was made harder by having his father as his primary backer, a relationship which soured when Guccione Sr. pulled the plug after less than two years.
But Guccione Jr. recruited independent backers and kept Spin alive, scratching out a slim existence in the shadow of Jann Wenner's Rolling Stone. While Rolling Stone clung to rockers loved by baby boomers, Spin established its niche with new music, alternative bands, gothic, rap and jazz (a nod to Guccione Jr.'s personal tastes) artists. When the rock 'n' roll world became inverted a few years ago, pushing alternative bands such as Nirvana into the mainstream, Spin was ahead of the curve. Its editors were already dancing to the beat of the coming revolution.
Being prepared for the future has its rewards today: circulation topped 500,000 for the first time last year, advertising sales are booming, Advertising Age named it one of 1995's top five magazines and Spin became America's music magazine of record, pushing Rolling Stone even further toward movies, TV and half-naked celebrity photos. And P.S.: Spin turned a profit for the first time in 1995.
"Our audience knew we were important way back," Guccione Jr. says. "Nirvana changed everything. Rock 'n' roll followed Nirvana; it was a course we were already on. The marketing industry was late to the table because it wasn't something they understood. Three years ago, they became very interested in our audience."
Making it on his own has exacted a heavy personal price; Guccione Jr. and Guccione Sr. haven't spoken since their split almost a decade ago. How does it feel to be on the rise while your father's magazine is perceived to be in decline?
"I will not be looking at my old man on the way down," Guccione Jr. insists. "None of my feeling good is tied to whether Penthouse has good or bad fortune. I love my father and I want well for him. I remember 20 years ago hearing that the Walt Disney Corporation was on the way down. And Time Warner. Reports of their deaths were premature. Now, could Penthouse use some new blood? Probably."
Guccione Jr. actually has kinder words for his father than he does for that other Junior publisher, John Kennedy, and his product, George magazine.
"After the magazine came out, I rolled my eyes," Guccione Jr. says. "The magazine is toothless, deadly dull. It's a nice, comfy, People magazine type where everybody is cuddled and cute. At the end of the day, magazines can only justify their existence if they have strong opinions and bravery. It comes down to who has the courage to say something worthwhile."
In that declaration, Guccione Jr. describes at least two men in the magazine world: himself and his father. While Guccione Sr. has railed against government cover-ups of everything from the Kennedy assassination to alien encounters, his son has made AIDS education and exploration his monthly crusade — distributing free condoms in one memorable issue.
"We had the temerity to say that the medical community didn't know everything they claimed to know," Guccione Jr. says. "Back then, we weren't all wearing red ribbons."
And it wasn't always a popular stance even within the halls of Spin.
"After the first issue, my then editor took up a petition that said, 'We don't want to run this column,' " the publisher recalls. "I said, 'Then you don't have to stay here.' I said if this magazine doesn't have enough substance to write about something other than music, I don't want any part of it."
From that vantage point, Guccione Jr. was particularly disappointed in Kennedy Jr. because one of George's editors previously worked at Spin. And he's not impressed by the fast start George had with major advertisers, either.
"John Kennedy's handshake is worth two ad pages," Guccione Jr. says. "You shake his hand, you buy two pages. But after that, the ad exec has to worry about his job."
But enough about someone else's magazine. Guccione Jr. is too busy expanding his own operation. The Spin Radio Network feeds daily news, rare musical clips and interviews to 45 stations nationwide, while 75 stations carry the monthly artist interviews and performance that characterize "Spin Sessions." A syndicated TV show based on the magazine is in the works, as is Spin Records.
On the print side, Guccione Jr. is following in his father's footsteps with plans for expanding his magazine base. In addition to producing more special editions of Spin itself, he's negotiating to publish an American version of the Italian young men's magazine, Max.
But while Spin has a thriving kiosk on America Online, SpinOnline, Guccione Jr. isn't sure about the merits of launching a Web site.
"I don't see how we can make money doing it; I'm not going to do it out of vanity, just to say we have a site," he says. "My staff came to me with a proposal to do it and said, 'We'll only lose half a million dollars!' I said, 'What's the good news?' They said, 'Other people are losing $3- to $4-million!' To me, it's lemming-like."
Finally, now that JFK Jr. is married, does that make Bob Guccione Jr. America's most eligible bachelor?
"Now that he's gone, maybe," Guccione Jr. says, laughing. "It may be my one fleeting moment to be most eligible anything, so I'll take it."
© 2007 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.
Originally Published October 14, 1996
Bob Guccione Jr. has come a long way in 11 years as editor and publisher of Spin magazine. A decade ago, he oversaw every word, every photo before it saw print, spending more time as editor than publisher.
"Today," he says, "I'm in the happy position of being a publisher who reads the magazine when it is published." And, he adds, "It's somewhat humbling that the magazine gets better the less I have to do with it."
To put Spin's history in perspective, consider the hoots of laughter when another famous Junior, John Kennedy, announced his plans to publish George magazine a year ago. (More about that below.) Guccione Jr., 41, despite being the son of Penthouse magazine publisher Bob Guccione, met the same kind of skepticism. His route was made harder by having his father as his primary backer, a relationship which soured when Guccione Sr. pulled the plug after less than two years.
But Guccione Jr. recruited independent backers and kept Spin alive, scratching out a slim existence in the shadow of Jann Wenner's Rolling Stone. While Rolling Stone clung to rockers loved by baby boomers, Spin established its niche with new music, alternative bands, gothic, rap and jazz (a nod to Guccione Jr.'s personal tastes) artists. When the rock 'n' roll world became inverted a few years ago, pushing alternative bands such as Nirvana into the mainstream, Spin was ahead of the curve. Its editors were already dancing to the beat of the coming revolution.
Being prepared for the future has its rewards today: circulation topped 500,000 for the first time last year, advertising sales are booming, Advertising Age named it one of 1995's top five magazines and Spin became America's music magazine of record, pushing Rolling Stone even further toward movies, TV and half-naked celebrity photos. And P.S.: Spin turned a profit for the first time in 1995.
"Our audience knew we were important way back," Guccione Jr. says. "Nirvana changed everything. Rock 'n' roll followed Nirvana; it was a course we were already on. The marketing industry was late to the table because it wasn't something they understood. Three years ago, they became very interested in our audience."
Making it on his own has exacted a heavy personal price; Guccione Jr. and Guccione Sr. haven't spoken since their split almost a decade ago. How does it feel to be on the rise while your father's magazine is perceived to be in decline?
"I will not be looking at my old man on the way down," Guccione Jr. insists. "None of my feeling good is tied to whether Penthouse has good or bad fortune. I love my father and I want well for him. I remember 20 years ago hearing that the Walt Disney Corporation was on the way down. And Time Warner. Reports of their deaths were premature. Now, could Penthouse use some new blood? Probably."
Guccione Jr. actually has kinder words for his father than he does for that other Junior publisher, John Kennedy, and his product, George magazine.
"After the magazine came out, I rolled my eyes," Guccione Jr. says. "The magazine is toothless, deadly dull. It's a nice, comfy, People magazine type where everybody is cuddled and cute. At the end of the day, magazines can only justify their existence if they have strong opinions and bravery. It comes down to who has the courage to say something worthwhile."
In that declaration, Guccione Jr. describes at least two men in the magazine world: himself and his father. While Guccione Sr. has railed against government cover-ups of everything from the Kennedy assassination to alien encounters, his son has made AIDS education and exploration his monthly crusade — distributing free condoms in one memorable issue.
"We had the temerity to say that the medical community didn't know everything they claimed to know," Guccione Jr. says. "Back then, we weren't all wearing red ribbons."
And it wasn't always a popular stance even within the halls of Spin.
"After the first issue, my then editor took up a petition that said, 'We don't want to run this column,' " the publisher recalls. "I said, 'Then you don't have to stay here.' I said if this magazine doesn't have enough substance to write about something other than music, I don't want any part of it."
From that vantage point, Guccione Jr. was particularly disappointed in Kennedy Jr. because one of George's editors previously worked at Spin. And he's not impressed by the fast start George had with major advertisers, either.
"John Kennedy's handshake is worth two ad pages," Guccione Jr. says. "You shake his hand, you buy two pages. But after that, the ad exec has to worry about his job."
But enough about someone else's magazine. Guccione Jr. is too busy expanding his own operation. The Spin Radio Network feeds daily news, rare musical clips and interviews to 45 stations nationwide, while 75 stations carry the monthly artist interviews and performance that characterize "Spin Sessions." A syndicated TV show based on the magazine is in the works, as is Spin Records.
On the print side, Guccione Jr. is following in his father's footsteps with plans for expanding his magazine base. In addition to producing more special editions of Spin itself, he's negotiating to publish an American version of the Italian young men's magazine, Max.
But while Spin has a thriving kiosk on America Online, SpinOnline, Guccione Jr. isn't sure about the merits of launching a Web site.
"I don't see how we can make money doing it; I'm not going to do it out of vanity, just to say we have a site," he says. "My staff came to me with a proposal to do it and said, 'We'll only lose half a million dollars!' I said, 'What's the good news?' They said, 'Other people are losing $3- to $4-million!' To me, it's lemming-like."
Finally, now that JFK Jr. is married, does that make Bob Guccione Jr. America's most eligible bachelor?
"Now that he's gone, maybe," Guccione Jr. says, laughing. "It may be my one fleeting moment to be most eligible anything, so I'll take it."
© 2007 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.
Labels: Advertising Age, Bob Guccione Jr., George magazine, John F. Kennedy Jr., Nirvana, Penthouse, Spin magazine
¶ 3:04 PM 0 Comments Links to this post
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Chris Napolitano, "Playboy Magazine" editor: Mr. Media Interview, Pt. 2
ANDELMAN: One of the main things that’s different about Playboy today than it was in 1988 when you joined is the competition. For a long time, it was basically Playboy and Penthouse. It was Hefner and Guccione. Today, Penthouse is basically on the scrap heap of adult magazine history, and your biggest competitor, I think, in print at least, would seem to be Maxim. There was an effort the last couple years to sort of “Maxim-ize” I hate to use the term, but Maxim-ize Playboy a bit. My sense is that you guys did that, but gradually you’ve kind of even pulled away from that and gone back to more of the older Playboy style.
NAPOLITANO: Yeah, that was a very conscious decision based on what feedback we were getting from our audience and from young men. It’s very true that when it comes to female personalities and stuff like that, Maxim, in their cover choices, is a very close competitor to ours. They are a starter magazine for a lot of young men.
ANDELMAN: Oh boy. They’re gonna love that term. I like that.
NAPOLITANO: Oh sure. Well, they have been reinventing themselves three times a year in an effort to get away from that, but the reality is that you can attract a guy’s attention, but to hold it over the long term, which is what most magazines on the newsstand are about these days, they are in a place where they can’t claim newness anymore. You have to provide something substantial, and those are the kind of reactions that we were getting, that there might be short attention span stuff going on everywhere on the net or on TV or on video games or whatever, but the best service a magazine can provide is high-quality entertainment in print form.
So we look at the core of our magazine, the well, the interview, and everything in that as not easily mimicked or something that works best on paper right now. That’s the big draw, and that’s what we’ve dedicated ourselves to providing to readers, and I don’t think that anybody really matches up against us in that way. We’re a general interest magazine for men. We have a lot of content overlap with Esquire. We have a dedication to fiction which puts us in a similar place with The New Yorker. We go in depth with personalities who have given our interview which kind of aligns us and puts us in competition with Vanity Fair. But the package is unique to us, and we don’t want to mess with that because in that mix, which also includes jokes and cartoons, is the secret to why people stay with us so long. And I think that’s a lesson that will be learned by other people who truly want to compete with us.
ANDELMAN: I could see that there was a point a few years ago where Maxim was certainly the hottie on the block, and people were talking about it, and there’s rarely anything that goes over a page it seems like. But, Playboy , you open it up, and you expect to be engrossed in the stories, you expect to be reading it and turning the pages and following it and jumping to the back of the book to finish the story and to learn something. Maxim it seems like, by the time you get interested in it, the story is over, and then you’re on to the next thing. They used to talk about the MTV Generation years ago, with all the jump-cutting, the short attention spans, but maybe if you buy into what you said about it being a starter magazine, yeah, it gets you into it, if you’re a young man and you haven’t been reading magazines, certainly there’s eye candy and you start reading it, but it leaves you kind of empty.
NAPOLITANO: Yeah, I would agree. I think definitely we’re editors talking to each other, and we’re in a field where we’re curious, and we like to read and consume that kind of material. I’m not opposed to a guy going to a newsstand and picking up a magazine that is different from mine, because I think that it basically will spark something in them that they’ll draw a connection; if they ever get a look at Playboy, they’ll be favorably impressed. But they’ll be in the habit of looking at the stuff. And judging from what Maxim is doing, they seem to have gone heavily in the direction of service journalism, so they’re still kind of pitching woo to their marketers and their advertisers and providing them with a lot of face-offs that are similar in terms of content. But the flip side is that they really are kind of packing every page with a lot of consumable things. They’re keeping their guys up to date with a lot of products and gadgets. And we’ll have to see whether that’s gonna be successful for them. But they don’t seem to be showing any interest in personalities or articles or fiction, so it’s a different model.
ANDELMAN: Now, I mention that it used to be Hefner and Guccione were the guys that everyone equated with men’s magazines. Guccione, of course, is not involved with Penthouse anymore. Hefner, from what we read, what we see, he’s still there but not maybe as active in the magazine. My question really is, do you think there’ll be another generation of editors, perhaps like yourself, that will rise in the coming years and become associated with these magazines? At Esquire, David Granger is clearly connected to that. People kind of in the industry know that’s a David Granger product. It’s got his fingerprint all over it. Will people be talking about Chris Napolitano the same way or whoever takes charge at Maxim, or will these things still be, Hefner and Guccione, and then there’s not so much a visible personality beyond that?
NAPOLITANO: Yeah, well, it’s funny to say. Less so than Guccione and more so Jann Wenner. I think Jann and Hefner and their magazines and their products are kind of very similar, and they both invented these things. And I don’t know whether magazines and the corporate climate necessarily whether you’re gonna see magazine products that are identified with a personality like that. I would say that this is a Hugh Hefner product. I’m in there, and I’m making a lot of decisions about where we’re going and generating material, but for our company, there’s nothing wrong with the identification of Hef and the magazine and the Playboy brand. That just is. I don’t think that we could possibly get somebody else to do the things that Hef does for this company.
ANDELMAN: I’m glad you mention that because I want to ask you, what does, relative to the magazine, what does Hef have to do with the magazine these days?
NAPOLITANO: Oh, he does a lot. He is a very easy guy to reach. For as famous a guy and as much as he has going on day to day, I don’t know where he finds the time, but he dedicates two or three hours a day to the magazine. And that goes from everything of talking to our photo editors on the West Coast who are very close to him and nearby generating Playmate photography or working with our photo director, Gary Cole, on the major and minor photography or engaging in dialogues with our cartoonists and approving the work that they do, get a lot of different ideas coming across his desk, and he’s picking stuff for them to finalize.
ANDELMAN: Who’s the last hand on the magazine when it goes out the door, is it you or is it him at this point?
NAPOLITANO: I would give it to him, but I don’t quite know what that really means. There are three or four points when the material that we’re pursuing is passed before Hef for review. We pace out the magazine at the very beginning of the process before any work is even turned in. We basically know where things are going in each magazine. He might think that something is inappropriate or wish for us to improve it, but we’re probably on the same page with that. And then the work starts coming in, and it’s a lot of work, a lot of moving parts to this thing. And when stories enter the system, he’s going to get a read on it. When layouts are being built, they come out of Chicago and New York and go for his approval. Eventually, he has seen everything that goes into the magazine and given it the thumbs up, and then we have to make it all work. That’s really the last hand in terms of the detail work. If there are changes that come along or things that get adjusted, it’s just time to pick up the phone and fill him in.
ANDELMAN: And Chris, you’ve been sitting in the big seat now for I think about three years, I think we’re just about at three years, have you had a moment where he’s wanted to do something or something has come up, and you’ve had to say no to Hugh Hefner or you’ve had to take a stand and kind of say look?
NAPOLITANO: Yeah. In the three years that I’ve been doing this, I’ve been here for a very long time, he’s very clear about what he wants. He knows that he’s creating an atmosphere and a feeling. He doesn’t pretend to be inside the mind of a 30-year-old guy, but he pretty much wants to know what that 30-year-old guy should think of us. So using that, we generate a whole lot of ideas. In that time frame that I’ve been here, he’s spiked, I’d say, about three stories for admittedly good reasons, and this is where he and I both are approving it all on the process where, okay, you see it on the schedule or maybe it’s an iffy idea, but you really go through the whole thing, and then you’ve got two weeks before you go to the printer, and he says, “No,” usually in the humor or the more Maximy vein of things. I’ve had no problem pulling those pieces because he’s usually very persuasive in making his case. I’ve never told him or had to say no to any ideas that he has because editors, we have batting averages, and he’s got a very high batting average for what is successful for the magazine, and so we see it three months later down the line in showing up on the newsstand.
ANDELMAN: I would think that there are real pros and cons to being the guy who’s been there for 20 years and that you’ve come up from an editorial assistant to rise, like I said, to the big seat, that the pro is that you have this incredible institutional knowledge, you probably know where every paper clip is kept in the office. On the other hand, having been there all that time and started under this incredible publishing legend, and I’m not just saying it to suck up to him, he is an incredible publishing legend, and he’s a man who’s influenced an awful lot of things. But then suddenly, you’re in the position 20 years later of the other people in the organization turn to you when there’s a dispute, or if there’s an issue, they turn to you and say, “Chris, this is what we believe, and Hef may think this, what are we going to do?” It’s got to be a little challenging at times.
NAPOLITANO: It is, but the best thing is to keep the dialogue going. Hef is, first and foremost an editor, which is a very interesting kind of thing. He’s many things, and he’s had many roles here, and he’s been famous for 54 years. But, his love is the magazine, and his greatest knowledge is as an editor. I feel very comfortable with him, and I’m not going to stroke myself here, but I believe that we’ve been putting out a fantastic product in the last three years, and I’ve heard as much from him. He doesn’t like getting in a place where he is dictating material. He wants you to understand what he’s looking for, and he wants to get it, but when he starts shortening that leash, or when he starts feeling that you can’t give him what he’s looking for, that’s when people panic or start making the wrong moves. So you have to be as aggressive as you would be under anybody.
Every editor has a boss, and sometimes that boss is waving newsstand results or advertising results in front of your face. Hef is waving quality and instinctively knowing what he thinks Playboy should look and feel like.
So let’s go back to one of the stories that -- I’m long-winded I know -- but the one thing that he’s been very gracious about is one time I was saying yes to something that he was saying no to, and that was a very nice piece from a book called The Weathermakers. It was all about global warming, and we were ahead of the curve on that one, and he had some problems with the layout, and he really didn’t want to go forward with the piece, but I persuaded him to think twice about it. It was going to be a big topic, and he was very happy when our issue hit the stands and two weeks later, “60 Minutes” used the same kind of iconic image that we did, which was a polar bear on a tropical island, and then two weeks after that, Vanity Fair came out with their first green issue. So you do have to stand your ground and persuade him, this is why we’re doing this. And he’s very quick on the uptake, and so things move forward. So those are the kind of conversations you have with him.
ANDELMAN: Well, Chris, before we finish, I want to try something with it. Do you remember the movie Sophie’s Choice?
NAPOLITANO: Uh, I never saw it.
ANDELMAN: Well, the basic idea was that I think it is the Nazis, they are going to take, she has two kids, they’re going to take one of the two kids, and she has to choose which one’s gonna die. So this is your Sophie’s Choice. I’m gonna kill one of Playboy ’s most treasured features, and you have to choose which one to save. Is it the Playboy interview or the Playboy jokes?
NAPOLITANO: Oh, boy. Oh, I would…..Wow, wow. I’d kill the jokes.
ANDELMAN: You’d kill the jokes, okay. I’m not done. Now, the Playboy interview or the Forum?
NAPOLITANO: Uh, I’d kill the Forum.
ANDELMAN: Okay, the Playboy interview or the Playboy advisor?
NAPOLITANO: Wow, that’s another tough one. I could get what I get from the advisor in other places. I’d kill the advisor.
ANDELMAN: Oh, tell Chip Rowe I’m very sorry.
NAPOLITANO: Yeah, we’ll give him something else to do.
ANDELMAN: Alright, last one. Well, he is multi-talented. Playboy interview or the centerfold?
NAPOLITANO: The interview.
ANDELMAN: Ah, there we go folks. We’ve narrowed down what’s important in the magazine. Alright, last question. Chris, you’re married, and I understand you’ve got two children.
NAPOLITANO: Yes.
ANDELMAN: How does the editor of Playboy position his workday when he gets home at night?
NAPOLITANO: Oh, I got to let it go. I have to let it go. I don’t take notes as to what happens during the day. This is a very interesting job to have, but you can care about something too deeply, and I’m so happy and pleased with the editorial product that we put out. I don’t want to brag, but there’s nothing that I don’t like about what we put on paper for the magazine. There are a host of other things that I’m responsible for or in the middle of. If there are 10 things, I have to be happy. Success is defined by six out of those ten things being right, and I want ten out of ten, and that can be nerve-wracking. But that’s my problem, and I got to let that go.
ANDELMAN: Maybe I should have asked the question slightly differently. I think you’re 43?
NAPOLITANO: Yeah.
ANDELMAN: Okay. You’ve got two kids, probably not too old, a wife, how do they explain what daddy does?
NAPOLITANO: Well, it’s kind of interesting. I have a daughter, and she’s older. I don’t think she’s at the age yet where her classmates might have picked up the magazine or found it. But they’ve been in the office, and they’ve seen, gotten glimpses of what we’re all about here. And it’s just a simple thing of like this is for adults. This is for adult men. Just like you’ll see me have a glass of wine during dinner, and you’re drinking juice. That’s just the way it is.
© 2007 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.
ANDELMAN: One of the main things that’s different about Playboy today than it was in 1988 when you joined is the competition. For a long time, it was basically Playboy and Penthouse. It was Hefner and Guccione. Today, Penthouse is basically on the scrap heap of adult magazine history, and your biggest competitor, I think, in print at least, would seem to be Maxim. There was an effort the last couple years to sort of “Maxim-ize” I hate to use the term, but Maxim-ize Playboy a bit. My sense is that you guys did that, but gradually you’ve kind of even pulled away from that and gone back to more of the older Playboy style.
NAPOLITANO: Yeah, that was a very conscious decision based on what feedback we were getting from our audience and from young men. It’s very true that when it comes to female personalities and stuff like that, Maxim, in their cover choices, is a very close competitor to ours. They are a starter magazine for a lot of young men.
ANDELMAN: Oh boy. They’re gonna love that term. I like that.
NAPOLITANO: Oh sure. Well, they have been reinventing themselves three times a year in an effort to get away from that, but the reality is that you can attract a guy’s attention, but to hold it over the long term, which is what most magazines on the newsstand are about these days, they are in a place where they can’t claim newness anymore. You have to provide something substantial, and those are the kind of reactions that we were getting, that there might be short attention span stuff going on everywhere on the net or on TV or on video games or whatever, but the best service a magazine can provide is high-quality entertainment in print form.
So we look at the core of our magazine, the well, the interview, and everything in that as not easily mimicked or something that works best on paper right now. That’s the big draw, and that’s what we’ve dedicated ourselves to providing to readers, and I don’t think that anybody really matches up against us in that way. We’re a general interest magazine for men. We have a lot of content overlap with Esquire. We have a dedication to fiction which puts us in a similar place with The New Yorker. We go in depth with personalities who have given our interview which kind of aligns us and puts us in competition with Vanity Fair. But the package is unique to us, and we don’t want to mess with that because in that mix, which also includes jokes and cartoons, is the secret to why people stay with us so long. And I think that’s a lesson that will be learned by other people who truly want to compete with us.
ANDELMAN: I could see that there was a point a few years ago where Maxim was certainly the hottie on the block, and people were talking about it, and there’s rarely anything that goes over a page it seems like. But, Playboy , you open it up, and you expect to be engrossed in the stories, you expect to be reading it and turning the pages and following it and jumping to the back of the book to finish the story and to learn something. Maxim it seems like, by the time you get interested in it, the story is over, and then you’re on to the next thing. They used to talk about the MTV Generation years ago, with all the jump-cutting, the short attention spans, but maybe if you buy into what you said about it being a starter magazine, yeah, it gets you into it, if you’re a young man and you haven’t been reading magazines, certainly there’s eye candy and you start reading it, but it leaves you kind of empty.
NAPOLITANO: Yeah, I would agree. I think definitely we’re editors talking to each other, and we’re in a field where we’re curious, and we like to read and consume that kind of material. I’m not opposed to a guy going to a newsstand and picking up a magazine that is different from mine, because I think that it basically will spark something in them that they’ll draw a connection; if they ever get a look at Playboy, they’ll be favorably impressed. But they’ll be in the habit of looking at the stuff. And judging from what Maxim is doing, they seem to have gone heavily in the direction of service journalism, so they’re still kind of pitching woo to their marketers and their advertisers and providing them with a lot of face-offs that are similar in terms of content. But the flip side is that they really are kind of packing every page with a lot of consumable things. They’re keeping their guys up to date with a lot of products and gadgets. And we’ll have to see whether that’s gonna be successful for them. But they don’t seem to be showing any interest in personalities or articles or fiction, so it’s a different model.
ANDELMAN: Now, I mention that it used to be Hefner and Guccione were the guys that everyone equated with men’s magazines. Guccione, of course, is not involved with Penthouse anymore. Hefner, from what we read, what we see, he’s still there but not maybe as active in the magazine. My question really is, do you think there’ll be another generation of editors, perhaps like yourself, that will rise in the coming years and become associated with these magazines? At Esquire, David Granger is clearly connected to that. People kind of in the industry know that’s a David Granger product. It’s got his fingerprint all over it. Will people be talking about Chris Napolitano the same way or whoever takes charge at Maxim, or will these things still be, Hefner and Guccione, and then there’s not so much a visible personality beyond that?
NAPOLITANO: Yeah, well, it’s funny to say. Less so than Guccione and more so Jann Wenner. I think Jann and Hefner and their magazines and their products are kind of very similar, and they both invented these things. And I don’t know whether magazines and the corporate climate necessarily whether you’re gonna see magazine products that are identified with a personality like that. I would say that this is a Hugh Hefner product. I’m in there, and I’m making a lot of decisions about where we’re going and generating material, but for our company, there’s nothing wrong with the identification of Hef and the magazine and the Playboy brand. That just is. I don’t think that we could possibly get somebody else to do the things that Hef does for this company.
ANDELMAN: I’m glad you mention that because I want to ask you, what does, relative to the magazine, what does Hef have to do with the magazine these days?
NAPOLITANO: Oh, he does a lot. He is a very easy guy to reach. For as famous a guy and as much as he has going on day to day, I don’t know where he finds the time, but he dedicates two or three hours a day to the magazine. And that goes from everything of talking to our photo editors on the West Coast who are very close to him and nearby generating Playmate photography or working with our photo director, Gary Cole, on the major and minor photography or engaging in dialogues with our cartoonists and approving the work that they do, get a lot of different ideas coming across his desk, and he’s picking stuff for them to finalize.
ANDELMAN: Who’s the last hand on the magazine when it goes out the door, is it you or is it him at this point?
NAPOLITANO: I would give it to him, but I don’t quite know what that really means. There are three or four points when the material that we’re pursuing is passed before Hef for review. We pace out the magazine at the very beginning of the process before any work is even turned in. We basically know where things are going in each magazine. He might think that something is inappropriate or wish for us to improve it, but we’re probably on the same page with that. And then the work starts coming in, and it’s a lot of work, a lot of moving parts to this thing. And when stories enter the system, he’s going to get a read on it. When layouts are being built, they come out of Chicago and New York and go for his approval. Eventually, he has seen everything that goes into the magazine and given it the thumbs up, and then we have to make it all work. That’s really the last hand in terms of the detail work. If there are changes that come along or things that get adjusted, it’s just time to pick up the phone and fill him in.
ANDELMAN: And Chris, you’ve been sitting in the big seat now for I think about three years, I think we’re just about at three years, have you had a moment where he’s wanted to do something or something has come up, and you’ve had to say no to Hugh Hefner or you’ve had to take a stand and kind of say look?
NAPOLITANO: Yeah. In the three years that I’ve been doing this, I’ve been here for a very long time, he’s very clear about what he wants. He knows that he’s creating an atmosphere and a feeling. He doesn’t pretend to be inside the mind of a 30-year-old guy, but he pretty much wants to know what that 30-year-old guy should think of us. So using that, we generate a whole lot of ideas. In that time frame that I’ve been here, he’s spiked, I’d say, about three stories for admittedly good reasons, and this is where he and I both are approving it all on the process where, okay, you see it on the schedule or maybe it’s an iffy idea, but you really go through the whole thing, and then you’ve got two weeks before you go to the printer, and he says, “No,” usually in the humor or the more Maximy vein of things. I’ve had no problem pulling those pieces because he’s usually very persuasive in making his case. I’ve never told him or had to say no to any ideas that he has because editors, we have batting averages, and he’s got a very high batting average for what is successful for the magazine, and so we see it three months later down the line in showing up on the newsstand.
ANDELMAN: I would think that there are real pros and cons to being the guy who’s been there for 20 years and that you’ve come up from an editorial assistant to rise, like I said, to the big seat, that the pro is that you have this incredible institutional knowledge, you probably know where every paper clip is kept in the office. On the other hand, having been there all that time and started under this incredible publishing legend, and I’m not just saying it to suck up to him, he is an incredible publishing legend, and he’s a man who’s influenced an awful lot of things. But then suddenly, you’re in the position 20 years later of the other people in the organization turn to you when there’s a dispute, or if there’s an issue, they turn to you and say, “Chris, this is what we believe, and Hef may think this, what are we going to do?” It’s got to be a little challenging at times.
NAPOLITANO: It is, but the best thing is to keep the dialogue going. Hef is, first and foremost an editor, which is a very interesting kind of thing. He’s many things, and he’s had many roles here, and he’s been famous for 54 years. But, his love is the magazine, and his greatest knowledge is as an editor. I feel very comfortable with him, and I’m not going to stroke myself here, but I believe that we’ve been putting out a fantastic product in the last three years, and I’ve heard as much from him. He doesn’t like getting in a place where he is dictating material. He wants you to understand what he’s looking for, and he wants to get it, but when he starts shortening that leash, or when he starts feeling that you can’t give him what he’s looking for, that’s when people panic or start making the wrong moves. So you have to be as aggressive as you would be under anybody.
Every editor has a boss, and sometimes that boss is waving newsstand results or advertising results in front of your face. Hef is waving quality and instinctively knowing what he thinks Playboy should look and feel like.
So let’s go back to one of the stories that -- I’m long-winded I know -- but the one thing that he’s been very gracious about is one time I was saying yes to something that he was saying no to, and that was a very nice piece from a book called The Weathermakers. It was all about global warming, and we were ahead of the curve on that one, and he had some problems with the layout, and he really didn’t want to go forward with the piece, but I persuaded him to think twice about it. It was going to be a big topic, and he was very happy when our issue hit the stands and two weeks later, “60 Minutes” used the same kind of iconic image that we did, which was a polar bear on a tropical island, and then two weeks after that, Vanity Fair came out with their first green issue. So you do have to stand your ground and persuade him, this is why we’re doing this. And he’s very quick on the uptake, and so things move forward. So those are the kind of conversations you have with him.
ANDELMAN: Well, Chris, before we finish, I want to try something with it. Do you remember the movie Sophie’s Choice?
NAPOLITANO: Uh, I never saw it.
ANDELMAN: Well, the basic idea was that I think it is the Nazis, they are going to take, she has two kids, they’re going to take one of the two kids, and she has to choose which one’s gonna die. So this is your Sophie’s Choice. I’m gonna kill one of Playboy ’s most treasured features, and you have to choose which one to save. Is it the Playboy interview or the Playboy jokes?
NAPOLITANO: Oh, boy. Oh, I would…..Wow, wow. I’d kill the jokes.
ANDELMAN: You’d kill the jokes, okay. I’m not done. Now, the Playboy interview or the Forum?
NAPOLITANO: Uh, I’d kill the Forum.
ANDELMAN: Okay, the Playboy interview or the Playboy advisor?
NAPOLITANO: Wow, that’s another tough one. I could get what I get from the advisor in other places. I’d kill the advisor.
ANDELMAN: Oh, tell Chip Rowe I’m very sorry.
NAPOLITANO: Yeah, we’ll give him something else to do.
ANDELMAN: Alright, last one. Well, he is multi-talented. Playboy interview or the centerfold?
NAPOLITANO: The interview.
ANDELMAN: Ah, there we go folks. We’ve narrowed down what’s important in the magazine. Alright, last question. Chris, you’re married, and I understand you’ve got two children.
NAPOLITANO: Yes.
ANDELMAN: How does the editor of Playboy position his workday when he gets home at night?
NAPOLITANO: Oh, I got to let it go. I have to let it go. I don’t take notes as to what happens during the day. This is a very interesting job to have, but you can care about something too deeply, and I’m so happy and pleased with the editorial product that we put out. I don’t want to brag, but there’s nothing that I don’t like about what we put on paper for the magazine. There are a host of other things that I’m responsible for or in the middle of. If there are 10 things, I have to be happy. Success is defined by six out of those ten things being right, and I want ten out of ten, and that can be nerve-wracking. But that’s my problem, and I got to let that go.
ANDELMAN: Maybe I should have asked the question slightly differently. I think you’re 43?
NAPOLITANO: Yeah.
ANDELMAN: Okay. You’ve got two kids, probably not too old, a wife, how do they explain what daddy does?
NAPOLITANO: Well, it’s kind of interesting. I have a daughter, and she’s older. I don’t think she’s at the age yet where her classmates might have picked up the magazine or found it. But they’ve been in the office, and they’ve seen, gotten glimpses of what we’re all about here. And it’s just a simple thing of like this is for adults. This is for adult men. Just like you’ll see me have a glass of wine during dinner, and you’re drinking juice. That’s just the way it is.
© 2007 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.
Labels: Bob Guccione, Esquire Magazine, GQ, Hugh Hefner, Maxim, nudity, Penthouse, Playboy, sex, The New Yorker
¶ 9:38 PM 0 Comments Links to this post
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Lisa Granatstein, "Mediaweek" editor: Mr. Media Interview
I love to read. They don’t start calling you Mr. Media because you’re illiterate, of course, and magazines have always fascinated me. When I pass a newsstand, I absolutely must stop and see what’s new and different. Drives my wife crazy.
My garage is littered with the carcasses of many forgotten publications, including Might, which was the first most people ever heard of Dave Eggers, and Smart, which gave a lift to a young Terry McDonnell, now editor of Sports Illustrated. Somewhere out there is also a copy of 7 Days, the short-lived city magazine that put Adam Moss on the map. Moss recently led his new magazine, New York, to three big wins in the 2007 National Magazine Awards, contributing to the 0 for 9 shut-out of The New Yorker and its respected editor, David Remnick.
Talking media, and magazines in particular, is great sport for me, so imagine my delight when Lisa Granatstein agreed to do a Mr. Media interview.
Lisa is the managing editor of Mediaweek and editor of Mediaweek.com. She’s a brand name in media coverage and has been so for nearly a decade.
Earlier in her career, Lisa was a reporter for Time magazine and an associate editor of its technology spin-off, Time Digital. She’s also worked at US News & World Report, Conde Nast Traveler Online, and she was a stringer for The New York Times metro desk.
BOB ANDELMAN/Mr. MEDIA: Lisa, the news these days has been pretty bad for print media, especially in newspapers. Every day, it seems another once-proud, ink-stained wretch announces layoffs. Book editors are on the endangered species list, and film critics appear to be next. What, by comparison, is the outlook for magazines?
LISA GRANATSTEIN: I’d say it’s pretty much on par with newspapers. Right now, the industry is really going through a bit of a revolution. Magazines need to change with the times. They are competing not just with cable and network TV but also with the Internet, and more and more, they are finding that their brands are becoming less relevant in print, and they are having to find a way to migrate online and be relevant there, and that’s difficult for a print brand. They don’t have the video capability that TV properties naturally do. There is a lot of technology that they have to build, and it’s been a big challenge, both in terms of drawing readers but also in maintaining an advertising base.
ANDELMAN: As a freelance writer myself, it seems that a lot of the magazines are almost at a disadvantage because a lot of them don’t have writing staffs beyond a few people, so even if they convert to video, they don’t have that loyalty. They hire people one story at a time, one piece at a time, and for the Internet, that’s hard, because you really have to be an everyday presence.
GRANATSTEIN: Right. A lot of magazines have to double up. Writers are writing for the Web site as well as for the magazine. I know in my case, our magazine, Mediaweek, is having reporters file stories daily for the Web site, it’s become a wire service, produce videos, do their own interviews online occasionally, and of course, work for the magazine, and that’s what’s happening across the board. Obviously, the independent magazines, the smaller, regional publications, are suffering much more than the bigger, wealthier major publications such as Hearst or Time Inc. But they, too, are finding it to be a real challenge.
ANDELMAN: And Time Inc. has been selling off magazines and cutting back, right?
GRANATSTEIN: Yes. Absolutely. Just recently, they sold what had been Times Mirror Magazines, then renamed Time4 Media, to a Swedish publishing giant known as Bonnier Group, and that was sold for $220 million. They’re just unloading a lot of titles. They have to pare down. Ann Moore believes in the revolution that is happening, and Time Inc. is becoming less of a magazine publisher and more of a brand maker and looking more at the Internet to grow its brands rather than launching new magazines. I mean, I can’t even remember the last time they actually launched one.
ANDELMAN: Business 2.0?
GRANATSTEIN: Yes, sure. I mean, it was a mystery.
ANDELMAN: It’s been a while.
GRANATSTEIN: Yes, that was a while ago. It used to be, years ago, that magazines, there used to be five, six, or more major launches a year, and now, if you’re lucky, you hear about one or two major ones. The commitment isn’t there to put out a magazine. The costs and the risks are far too high. Ann Moore, the CEO of Time Inc., I believe, is looking more at the Internet properties, at expanding online rather than focusing on the print publications.
ANDELMAN: I guess the biggest magazine launch of late would be Portfolio, right?
GRANATSTEIN: Absolutely.
ANDELMAN: Conde Nast, and that didn’t really win a lot of plaudits. I mean, people didn’t seem very excited by this… It’s like a paperweight. It’s a huge publication, but no one is saying, oh, boy, you’ve gotta run out and get this.
GRANATSTEIN: Right. It kind of landed with a thud, I mean, both in the sense of it being huge with advertising. The publisher, David Carey, who’s from The New Yorker originally, has a real way. He’s quite an amazing publisher. He can really sell, and he sold this, but it has yet to be seen whether the readers are really interested in another business publication.
GRANATSTEIN: Yeah. It took a year and a half to get this thing out the door, which is a huge amount of time, and that might have been to their disadvantage. They probably had to spend too much time fiddling around trying to get it perfect, and sometimes you just need to get it out a little faster and then think about what you did, but too much thought sometimes doesn’t help.
ANDELMAN: I guess it’s the difference between are you producing Forbes or Fortune on a weekly basis, or are you producing The Harvard Review on more like a monthly or quarterly basis?
GRANATSTEIN: Right. The key issue is do you really need a year and a half to knock out an issue?
ANDELMAN: Yeah, and well, they’re what, quarterly right now?
GRANATSTEIN: Right now, I think they’re only publishing two issues this year, and then they are going to be publishing monthly next year. So the next one is coming out in the fall. They also have an active Web site, but you know, it’s a lot of time between two issues, but I guess they’ll be doing a lot of research, yet more research to see what went right and what went wrong in that issue and refining it.
ANDELMAN: And while it was a beautiful picture on the cover, it didn’t really say anything.
GRANATSTEIN: It was a gorgeous picture on the cover, but does it scream business? I’m not so sure. I’m not sure what it was really trying to do. Was it arrogance thinking that there was so much publicity out there everybody knew what Portfolio was? Or maybe they thought the name would be enough. I don’t know. I’m interested in seeing how it does on newsstands. It’s a little too soon to tell, but it certainly led to changes at other business publications, which can only be a good thing. There was a lot of maneuvering and redesigning and overhauling at Fortune and Forbes. I think that’s a good thing. It does stir up the pot a little bit.
ANDELMAN: Well, let’s talk about some other specific magazines. If any of these you’re not comfortable with or you’re not that familiar with, we can keep moving down, but I was kind of curious to see what you thought about what happened when TV Guide switched from digest to full size. Did it stem the tide of the circulation losses, or does it just postpone the inevitable for them?
© 2007 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.
My garage is littered with the carcasses of many forgotten publications, including Might, which was the first most people ever heard of Dave Eggers, and Smart, which gave a lift to a young Terry McDonnell, now editor of Sports Illustrated. Somewhere out there is also a copy of 7 Days, the short-lived city magazine that put Adam Moss on the map. Moss recently led his new magazine, New York, to three big wins in the 2007 National Magazine Awards, contributing to the 0 for 9 shut-out of The New Yorker and its respected editor, David Remnick.
Talking media, and magazines in particular, is great sport for me, so imagine my delight when Lisa Granatstein agreed to do a Mr. Media interview.
Lisa is the managing editor of Mediaweek and editor of Mediaweek.com. She’s a brand name in media coverage and has been so for nearly a decade.
Earlier in her career, Lisa was a reporter for Time magazine and an associate editor of its technology spin-off, Time Digital. She’s also worked at US News & World Report, Conde Nast Traveler Online, and she was a stringer for The New York Times metro desk.
BOB ANDELMAN/Mr. MEDIA: Lisa, the news these days has been pretty bad for print media, especially in newspapers. Every day, it seems another once-proud, ink-stained wretch announces layoffs. Book editors are on the endangered species list, and film critics appear to be next. What, by comparison, is the outlook for magazines?
LISA GRANATSTEIN: I’d say it’s pretty much on par with newspapers. Right now, the industry is really going through a bit of a revolution. Magazines need to change with the times. They are competing not just with cable and network TV but also with the Internet, and more and more, they are finding that their brands are becoming less relevant in print, and they are having to find a way to migrate online and be relevant there, and that’s difficult for a print brand. They don’t have the video capability that TV properties naturally do. There is a lot of technology that they have to build, and it’s been a big challenge, both in terms of drawing readers but also in maintaining an advertising base.
ANDELMAN: As a freelance writer myself, it seems that a lot of the magazines are almost at a disadvantage because a lot of them don’t have writing staffs beyond a few people, so even if they convert to video, they don’t have that loyalty. They hire people one story at a time, one piece at a time, and for the Internet, that’s hard, because you really have to be an everyday presence.
GRANATSTEIN: Right. A lot of magazines have to double up. Writers are writing for the Web site as well as for the magazine. I know in my case, our magazine, Mediaweek, is having reporters file stories daily for the Web site, it’s become a wire service, produce videos, do their own interviews online occasionally, and of course, work for the magazine, and that’s what’s happening across the board. Obviously, the independent magazines, the smaller, regional publications, are suffering much more than the bigger, wealthier major publications such as Hearst or Time Inc. But they, too, are finding it to be a real challenge.
ANDELMAN: And Time Inc. has been selling off magazines and cutting back, right?
GRANATSTEIN: Yes. Absolutely. Just recently, they sold what had been Times Mirror Magazines, then renamed Time4 Media, to a Swedish publishing giant known as Bonnier Group, and that was sold for $220 million. They’re just unloading a lot of titles. They have to pare down. Ann Moore believes in the revolution that is happening, and Time Inc. is becoming less of a magazine publisher and more of a brand maker and looking more at the Internet to grow its brands rather than launching new magazines. I mean, I can’t even remember the last time they actually launched one.
ANDELMAN: Business 2.0?
GRANATSTEIN: Yes, sure. I mean, it was a mystery.
ANDELMAN: It’s been a while.
GRANATSTEIN: Yes, that was a while ago. It used to be, years ago, that magazines, there used to be five, six, or more major launches a year, and now, if you’re lucky, you hear about one or two major ones. The commitment isn’t there to put out a magazine. The costs and the risks are far too high. Ann Moore, the CEO of Time Inc., I believe, is looking more at the Internet properties, at expanding online rather than focusing on the print publications.
ANDELMAN: I guess the biggest magazine launch of late would be Portfolio, right?
GRANATSTEIN: Absolutely.
ANDELMAN: Conde Nast, and that didn’t really win a lot of plaudits. I mean, people didn’t seem very excited by this… It’s like a paperweight. It’s a huge publication, but no one is saying, oh, boy, you’ve gotta run out and get this.
GRANATSTEIN: Right. It kind of landed with a thud, I mean, both in the sense of it being huge with advertising. The publisher, David Carey, who’s from The New Yorker originally, has a real way. He’s quite an amazing publisher. He can really sell, and he sold this, but it has yet to be seen whether the readers are really interested in another business publication.
There was a little bit of buzz, but it quickly died away.ANDELMAN: Once people actually held it in their hands.
GRANATSTEIN: Yeah. It took a year and a half to get this thing out the door, which is a huge amount of time, and that might have been to their disadvantage. They probably had to spend too much time fiddling around trying to get it perfect, and sometimes you just need to get it out a little faster and then think about what you did, but too much thought sometimes doesn’t help.
ANDELMAN: I guess it’s the difference between are you producing Forbes or Fortune on a weekly basis, or are you producing The Harvard Review on more like a monthly or quarterly basis?
GRANATSTEIN: Right. The key issue is do you really need a year and a half to knock out an issue?
ANDELMAN: Yeah, and well, they’re what, quarterly right now?
GRANATSTEIN: Right now, I think they’re only publishing two issues this year, and then they are going to be publishing monthly next year. So the next one is coming out in the fall. They also have an active Web site, but you know, it’s a lot of time between two issues, but I guess they’ll be doing a lot of research, yet more research to see what went right and what went wrong in that issue and refining it.
ANDELMAN: And while it was a beautiful picture on the cover, it didn’t really say anything.
GRANATSTEIN: It was a gorgeous picture on the cover, but does it scream business? I’m not so sure. I’m not sure what it was really trying to do. Was it arrogance thinking that there was so much publicity out there everybody knew what Portfolio was? Or maybe they thought the name would be enough. I don’t know. I’m interested in seeing how it does on newsstands. It’s a little too soon to tell, but it certainly led to changes at other business publications, which can only be a good thing. There was a lot of maneuvering and redesigning and overhauling at Fortune and Forbes. I think that’s a good thing. It does stir up the pot a little bit.
ANDELMAN: Well, let’s talk about some other specific magazines. If any of these you’re not comfortable with or you’re not that familiar with, we can keep moving down, but I was kind of curious to see what you thought about what happened when TV Guide switched from digest to full size. Did it stem the tide of the circulation losses, or does it just postpone the inevitable for them?
© 2007 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.
Labels: Lisa Granatstein, Maxim, New York Observer, Penthouse, Portfolio, The New Yorker, TV Guide, WonderTime
¶ 7:13 AM 0 Comments Links to this post
Seed Newsvine
