Populist magazine The Week has sprung up with a circulation of 500,000 — no small feat in a climate where newsweeklies like Time and Newsweek continue to see their numbers slide. Haven’t picked The Week up recently? You’ll appreciate its “front of the book of the Economist” approach, where the week’s biggest news items from around the world get summarized into bite size pieces, leaving you significantly more worldly after flipping through its pages. Perhaps you also forgot who’s running the magazine: Felix Dennis, of that little magazine that refused to grow up, Maxim.
So how come this magazine is such a breakout hit, while its brethren are fighting for oxygen? Because Dennis & Co. have thrown journalistic principles in the crapper!
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Former Dennis Publishing chief and possible murderer Felix Dennis now says his homicidal confession in London’s Times was just a prank. To sell books!
Normally, we’d believe a line like that; so desperate is everyone to sell their product, they’re willing to say or do anything to the public to get some buzz. That’s Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt’s business model.
Except Dennis caught himself in a lie. And now we’re back to leaning toward “murderer.”
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Get enough booze in former Dennis Publishing chief Felix Dennis, and he’s wont to tell you a story about how he killed a man. Leave it to lad magger Dennis to make his stories about frequenting hookers and going on all-night coke binges completely uninteresting; it’s the one about when, 25 years ago, he pushed a guy over a cliff because he was abusing a lady.
That’s the story being reported by the Times of London’s Ginny Dougary, who was asked by Dennis, a day after the interview was conducted, to leave out that little anecdote. His doctors even told him that he was in a weak mental state when the interview took place. And after a dozen paragraphs wishy-washing between whether she would print the story out of concern for Dennis’ mental health, Dougary, obviously, eventually does.
The big news today (and this should give you a hint as to how little media gossip is in circulation) is the exit of Maxim magazine’s editor in chief Ed Needham.
As you all know, Keith Kelly has closely followed the destruction of Dennis publishing and its affiliate magazine since publisher Felix Dennis decided to sell off his lad fantasies to follow another dream: repopulating the forests of England. Whatever, good for him — we’ve heard of publishers doing crazier shit. Kelly, however, finds this so hilarious, he even felt the need to stick with his “dead trees” joke.
Media Ink April 5, 2006:
While his empire has been built in part on products printed on dead trees, he has often waxed philosophical on a desire to become a philanthropist and restore a major forest to his native England.
From Today’s Media Ink:
The eccentric multimillionaire has said he wants to reforest his native England starting with the so-called Forest of Dennis. (Not bad for a mogul who built a good part of his fortune on dead trees.)
So hilarious. Kelly’s job doesn’t depend on dead trees at all, right? We hope you all learned your lessons today: newspapers recycle jokes that aren’t worth the dead tress they’re printed on. Just read everything online.
DON’T NEEDHAM [Keith J. Kelly, New York Post]
And just when we were getting so excited over the concept of Maxim India, Felix Dennis, the publisher behind Maxim and Stuff, is putting the entire Dennis Publishing up on the block.
Dennis was the first to import the beer and babe magazine formula to America, where he boldly predicted it would outsell the established men’s magazines.
After launching in 1997, Maxim, with its irreverent frat boyish humor, quickly eclipsed the established men’s magazines, including GQ, Esquire and Details, and eventually spawned its own niche when it started brother title Stuff.
Just a week after saying goodbye to Stuff’s editorial director Andy Clerkson, the lad mags are up for grabs, with a rumored price tag of $250 million.
So, what’s next for the founder of glossy keg stands and wet t-shirt contests? Replacing all the trees he’s destroyed with his frat boy bathroom literature: “He has often waxed philosophical on a desire to become a philanthropist and restore a major forest to his native England.”
Too bad he can’t to something truly good for society, like, restoring all of the brain cells that were wasted while ogling his mags.
FELIX DENNIS THROWS IN TOWEL HERE, MAGS MAY SELL FOR $250M [Keith Kelly, New York Post]