Here’s a question for the talented folks at Men’s Journal: If your leader, Greg Emmanuel, is the chief content officer, why are his lieutenants called deputy editors? And what does it say about Emmanuel’s team that when faced with a decision on what story to put on the cover — a GI overcoming his demons by returning to Iraq (to ski!), the suicide of a young, very-much-in-love alpinist or the day-to-day routine of a late-night talk show host — it chose the lamest one?
Nothing against Seth Meyers, who has, as the fourth host of NBC’s 35-year-old “Late Night,” quickly infused his brand of comedy into the one-hour talker, but Emmanuel’s choice is style over substance.
That choice highlights the biggest problem with American Media’s monthly magazine: What men are they talking to? Emmanuel took over the top spot in July when AMI boss David Pecker bought MJ from Wenner Media and, if anything, the 112-page January issue shows the newbie editor still must up his game a quite a bit.
The editors try to use a 14-month-old photo of an ultralight flying 3,000 feet over Monument Valley to talk up the move by the Trump White House to shrink Bears Ears National Monument — but other magazines have made their political points better by using a photo from ground level showing precise spots that will now fall outside the protected zone. MJ’s fashion, books, food and travel offering are pedestrian and forgettable.
Out in the Pennsylvania countryside, Matt Bean, the editor-in-chief of Rodale’s Men’s Health, has put out a December issue that speaks to a wider variety of men. Sure, you have to sift through a seemingly endless array of glute, ab and bicep how-tos, but once you do, the effort is worth it.
Men’s Health takes itself way less seriously and that is seriously fun.
While both titles have the gratuitous shot of a woman with a slightly revealing body part (and let’s declare the cleavage shot dead and the butt cheek peek as having its moment), MH’s “Inside the Orgasm Lab” and “On Patrol with the Xtreme Justice League” are a hoot.
Both issues also contain a small dose of food guru Anthony Bourdain — and here, again, Bean proves he is more adept at using potent ingredients.
Miss-Fortune on end-of-year review
Fortune set itself the near-impossible task of delivering the annual list issue — i.e., the winners and losers in this year’s bull stock market — in a way that wasn’t cloyingly self-congratulatory.
And, yep, the Dec. 15 issue missed the mark big time.
So much so that the Time Inc. finance bible went in whole hog with a shout-out to how its stock picks “crushed the market.”
But, alas, there was a piece of buried treasure in there: an insiders’ guide for political donors. “The key to spending money effectively in politics … is to ignore high-profile races in favor of ‘structural interventions’ that change the state of play,” according to Demos Action policy analyst Sean McElwee.
Fortune suggests donors funnel their money toward causes rather than candidates.
Far more engrossing is a wide-ranging issue from Bloomberg Businessweek that includes an analysis of who Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway successor might be (they think it’s Greg Abel), and the story of a man who tracked down loan sharks who were trying to shake him down for fake loans he never took out.
Bloomberg also has a pack-breaking story on the extreme inflation that has crippled Venezuela’s economy, and how some Venezuelans have turned to old online video games like Rune-Scape and Tibia to make a living.
Believe it or not, players spend up to 11 hours a day at internet cafes, grinding their virtual characters to earn in-game currencies, which they then resell for real money or cryptocurrencies.