Who Says People Don't Care About Print? Magazine Covers Dominate the News Cycle

Magazines still matter, of course. If not, then why did three separate stories about magazine covers dominate today's news cycle? Vanity Fair kicked off things early this morning when it tweeted this eye-catching cover of a pregnant Serena Williams, photographed by Annie Leibovitz:

Vanity Fair has a way of making headlines with its covers. Remember two years ago when its Caitlyn Jenner unveiling became not just the year's most talked about magazine but the most buzzed-about media event period? That bombshell image, like the Serena cover, was announced quietly, with just a simple tweet, meaning that the most arresting and impactful images don't require a press conference to get attention or to become iconic. Speaking of icons (to me anyway), here's another, much-chatted-about cover of the day — unexpectedly belonging to Delta's in-flight magazine:

Bustle noted that social media just couldn't quit talking about this cover featuring Canada's ridiculously appealing leader. My personal favorite among the reactions:

Finally, even though we're breaking with our daily ritual of ignoring him in the hopes he will disappear, our president is once again making headlines, this time by placing fake magazine covers featuring himself throughout his golf clubs. Here's one:

It's a story The Washington Post broke that got picked up by AOL, Business Insider, The Telegraph and everyone else, including The Hill, which had the headline of the day:

If this guy thinks the media suck so hard, then why is he fixated on what's written about him and on magazine covers in particular — including fake ones? A Time spokeswoman confirmed to the Post that the above is not, in fact, an actual cover, despite the fact that Trump has appeared on real covers of Time. On top of all the other lawsuits he faces, wouldn't a copyright infringement case brought by Time Inc. against the media's greatest tormentor be especially delicious?

Sweet Home Alabama? Food & Wine's Southern Move Another Loss for NYC

Time Inc. has announced it is moving Food & Wine's operations from New York to Birmingham, Alabama. The magazine's leadership stressed in media reports that this is really no big deal, since foodie culture exists everywhere — including, coincidentally, in places where it costs a fraction to run a media company (or any business) versus Manhattan. Hunter Lewis — the editor of Cooking Light who now takes over Food & Wine since its awesome and highly respected editor, Nilou Motamed, refused to relocate — told the Times: "You can create and do business in food anywhere now." Meanwhile, Forbes proclaimed that the move is "more proof that the South now rules American dining," noting that Birmingham has joined the likes of New Orleans, Atlanta and Nashville as one of the South's "food cities." I do not argue those points, nor do I fault the financially struggling Time Inc. with doing whatever it can to salvage its business. Still, this development is further, somewhat sad evidence of the end of New York as the media and cultural capital of the country. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if Time Inc. eventually moves virtually all its operations to Alabama — or if other publishers follow suit bolting the city. It simply costs too much to run a legacy media business out of New York, even with whatever generous tax breaks the state and city are giving these companies to stick around — which is why places like Birmingham, Charleston, Knoxville and Jersey City have become mini media capitals. In a way, this trend is a reassuring thing — in a modern world, we can do virtually any kind of business from anywhere, of course, notably from places where the cost of living is not nearly as crushing as it is in New York, and where the overall quality of life is arguably better as well. Not to mention where the tax burden is less onerous. Alabama collects only a nominal income tax on its residents, while other places — including Texas, Florida, Washington and Tennessee — have no state income tax at all. Meanwhile, if you live and work in New York, you have to pay income tax not only to New York State but also to the city — hardly a formula for attracting and retaining people who don't happen to be millionaires. Of course, if you happen to live outside New York in this digital era, you get the same Netflix and HBO shows as people who live in the city, you can get the same stuff shipped to you overnight from Amazon, you can watch Pornhub, you can take an Uber home, you can stay in a boutique hotel, you can shop at Trader Joe's and Whole Foods, you can eat awesome, locally sourced food at cool restaurants, and you can produce a kick-ass magazine or website — all without going bankrupt. Still, there is, again, something quite unfortunate about it all, at least for those of us who cling to nostalgia. (Some of us still are not over Time Inc. moving out of the iconic Time-Life Building on Sixth Avenue in midtown.) I mean, sure, Birmingham might have a lot going for it, or L.A. or Atlanta or Miami or Jersey City — but that doesn't mean I want to see the Metropolitan Opera or the Whitney Museum move there. OK, so one magazine is moving out of the city — big deal. But with every institution that does that — and there's an alarming number of them — the city loses a little chunk of its soul. And that is definitely not a good thing for New York. Then again, sometimes media people leaving the city can be a good and welcome thing — take Rush Limbaugh, who years ago forsook New York for Florida, with its ample sunshine, favorable tax climate and virtually endless supply of cheap, trailer-park pharmaceuticals. And that, my friends, was a very good thing for New York and the people who love it.

Isaiah Thomas Gets to the Bottom of Things On ESPN, The Magazine's Annual Body Issue

(Via ESPN, The Magazine)

Kate McKinnon a KNOCKOUT on Elle Cover

(Via Elle)

Forbes Magazine Ranks the Highest-Paid Entertainers — aka, "An Enemies List"

I've done my share of magazine profiles on celebrities and otherwise brushed up against a few boldface names in my time, and Forbes's list of the highest-paid entertainers features a handful of so-called personalities who bring back personal memories — some fond, some bad, and one in particular I am about as wistful for as that unfortunate tummy issue I once experienced in the Cartagena airport toilets.

So, let's play a little game of "Friend or Enemy?"...

Which seemingly nice but actually quite awful, very rich and popular celeb says "no" to absolutely everything — every magazine cover, every magazine profile, every top-10 list, every event, everything — she is invited to be part of, even if promised everything short of being called god in print?

Which leading man once graced underwear ads but who in person turned out to look like a homeless person, and a short one?

Which pop star came by the house for Thanksgiving, pre-fame, and was so apparently stoned that the rest of my guests and I were forced to listen very hard to understand anything the person was saying over the course of an entire evening?

Which overexposed beauty seems like she'd be a diva but is actually one of the nicest and most professional people you'd ever hope to work with?

On the other hand, which dubious "celebrity" turned out to be an absolute terror, ultimately walking off a very expensive photo shoot because of not "feeling it," resulting in weeks of negotiations and ultimately the whole thing getting scrapped and costing my employer a small fortune?

Which movie star's publicist lobbied hard for a magazine cover for her client — then proceeded to be so difficult negotiating the simplest of terms that we pulled the plug, sending said publicist first into fits, then threats before launching a full-blown, ultimately unsuccessful campaign of begging and pleading?

Which sexy star, despite our most earnest appeals, would not consent to a photo shoot (even though she'd be lucky to be the subject of any magazine profile) — so we ended up getting her back by writing about her anyway and Photoshopping her head onto a model's body?

Which queen of her own entertainment empire/idol of mine confessed to me that she is an insomniac who gets almost no sleep and begins each day by around 4 a.m.?

Which singer did I always hate but got to see perform during a small, invitation-only show at last year's Cannes festival — and ended up so wowing me that I became a megafan in an instant?

It's More Like Watergate Than You Think

In his column today, the Times's Jim Rutenberg makes some excellent points about how Russiagate is different from Watergate—its central point being that the rise of the right-wing media has made it all that more difficult for actual facts to rise to the top. He won't get any argument from me on that. But it bears remembering that back in the 70s, despite the creation of Fox News still being decades into the future, there was a very real effort afoot, especially early on, to discredit The Washington Post as it peeled back the layers of Nixon's stinky onion, a fact that is underscored in the late Kay Graham's excellent, Pulitzer-winning autobiography, Personal History. The book is 20 years old now, but this Trump mess and its echoing of Watergate inspired me to revisit as an early-summer read what remains one of the best-written memoirs of a public figure I ever read—and its passages on the paper's takedown of Nixon are especially riveting, timely, and often prescient. Compare the current, unrelenting attacks on the press in the wake of FBI chief James Comey's firing with Graham's recounting of the daily shit that was being hurled at the Post—even following the infamous "Saturday Night Massacre"—and her increasing annoyance of it:

Yet the Post remained under attack—and the attack was becoming much more public. By this time I had warmed up to a degree of toughness of which I probably wouldn't have been capable the year before. ... For example, whereas earlier I might have been somewhat sympathetic with readers who wrote about the sharpness of Herblock's pen, in the later stages of Watergate I had no patience with those who complained he was being unfair to the president. To one scathing letter, I responded, "We have been heavily attacked for biased reporting by many individuals who, when confronted with the facts, have since resigned from the government." I wrote to a man in Florida on October 1973, facetiously thanking him for sending me a copy of an ad from the Miami paper suggesting that we belonged in jail and asking him, "If we are exaggerating minor peccadillos, why has the majority of the White House staff had to be unloaded?"

The Post was routinely accused of making a mountain out of a molehill throughout its Watergate coverage, much as the mainstream media is now being trashed by the conservative political machine over its reporting on Russiagate. (Newt Gingrich this weekend called for GOP leaders to "abolish" the Russia probe, suggesting that the heretofore universally respected Special Counsel Robert Mueller is now somehow biased and his investigation suddenly tainted. When Newt Gingrich starts trying to interfere, you know you're onto something.) Donald Trump and his fans, as we all saw, took to Twitter after Comey's testimony last week to declare the whole thing a "witch hunt" and the president himself vindicated. Seems like a good moment to consider Kay Graham's summation of Watergate:

Even today, some people think the whole thing was a minor peccadillo, the sort of thing engaged in by lots of politicians. I believe Watergate was an unprecedented effort to subvert the political process. It was a pervasive, indiscriminate use of power and authority from an administration with a passion for secrecy and deception and an astounding lack of regard for the normal constraints of democratic politics. To my mind, the whole thing was a very real perversion of the democratic system.

Let's see now, who does that remind us of?