Randall Lane, "P.O.V." editor: Mr. Media Interview Classic

Originally published July 21, 1997

Don't hate Randall Lane because he's arrogant. As editor in chief of P.O.V., a new men's magazine waging war in a brutally competitive marketplace, he makes a little attitude go a long way.

Take P.O.V.'s all-out frontal assault on arch-rival Details, a 10-year-old magazine of choice for tattooed, body-piercing slacker punks.

P.O.V., itself a rising magazine of choice for career-bent, humorless twentysomethings, sent out postcards with a picture of the Titanic on one side, labeling Details as a sinking ship following the firing of yet another Details editor and a reported switch in editorial direction from all things featherweight to service features with a pro-career bent.

"They were clearly adrift editorially, and that is one of our fundamental strengths," Lane says. "We have never changed our mission or our focus and to see them all of a sudden do a 180-degree switch and come right to us, struck all of us as a sinking ship. That's where the postcard came from."



The magazine fired another round in June by slapping a sticker on its cover that read "Forget GQ, Try P.O.V." That backfired, at least with one reader. Shades of J. Danforth Quayle.

"While I am pleased that P.O.V. has been awarded 'Adweek's Start-up of the Year,' " wrote Carlos G. Martinez, "GQ you are not."

Some might think P.O.V., with just two years under its belt, was asking for a kick in the pants by taking such cynical and aggressive shots at its competition. But such sass probably grabbed more industry attention than any single edition of the magazine.

"Our most direct competitor is probably Details," Lane says. "We are happy to go straight head-to-head against them, because we are smarter, we know what we are doing and our mission has been validated. Details' new emphasis on careers and 'downtown is dead' -- we have been espousing that for two years and we have been doing it. This magazine was founded by entrepreneurs, people stepped out of the traditional career track, who say that entrepreneurship is cool, that being serious about your work as well as your lifestyle is cool. They are finally coming around two years later and saying, 'Well, you guys are probably right.' The difference is, we know how to do it, we are living the life and we are not just pretending."

Arrogant? Maybe, maybe not.

Oh, sorry, Randall. Didn't mean to interrupt.

"Our direct peers? We will take any of them on," Lane continues. "We are smarter than they are. We know what we are doing. We have never changed our mission, and we think we have the right formula.

"GQ and Esquire, which skew a little older, are not doing a very good job. Guys my age -- I am 29 -- are crying out for something that talks to them, and Details never has. So the reason we singled them out is because we see them as somebody who is trying to do what we do but has always failed. We really understand what is going on. We are not trying to push (readers) into getting nipple rings. Details panders to the idea that the twenty-something person is a slacker, while we say guys in this age group actually work for a living, and yes, we like to have a good time, we like to go out, we like to go to see music, and we care about fashion, but we are also concerned about our going out and exercising and playing sports and also working. That's something Details is finally realizing, but I think they are a little late to the table."

Lane was previously the Washington bureau chief at Forbes, where he met P.O.V. founder and publisher Drew Massey. They are now part of of a generation of fast-rising twentysomething journalists including Swing's David Lauren, the Electronic Newsstand's Brian Hecht and Matt Drudge, author of the highly respected, media-savvy Drudge Report, who are rising to the top of credible, big-money media operations that they helped created.

"Hopefully," Lane says, "(my) credentials are solid enough so people can say, 'Well, this guy is young, but he is certainly not green, and he certainly knows what he is doing.' Our whole staff is like that. Young, but that doesn't mean that we don't know what we are doing. In fact, I think we know what we are doing for this market better than anybody else."




P.O.V. hasn't exactly taken the consumer magazine world by storm. When was the last time you heard somebody say, "Did you see that great article in P.O.V.?" More likely you heard somebody at a newsstand wondering to what the bland-sounding title referred. P.O.V.? Is that anything like POZ, another new magazine, albeit one for HIV-positive men?

It apparently wasn't enough that the editors put "Guy's Survival Guide" in small type under the title; as of the June issue, a ribbon added across the top of the cover now explains it all: "The Men's Magazine with the Smart Point of View."

Get it?

Lane says the magazine's title indicates "that we have a focus, and our articles are pointed, are opinionated. This isn't just your flat, windy magazine. This is a magazine with some spice to it, and hopefully the name encompasses a lot of that. It is also a name that doesn't have a lot of preconceived notions because people can't assume they know what you are about automatically. I mean, what did 'GQ' mean when GQ was founded? (THIRTYSOMETHING MR. MEDIA SEZ: "GQ" is shorthand for Gentleman's Quarterly") The editors of GQ made it mean something. I mean, if anything, decades ago, when Esquire started, maybe you thought it was a magazine for lawyers, but what Esquire did was make 'Esquire' mean something. That's what we are doing here at P.O.V."

The biggest difference between P.O.V. and other magazines is that P.O.V. is all "service," meaning it seems like every story tells you how to do something or where to do it. It's packed with advice and personal experience, such as Brian Dawson's hysterical, first-person "You Got Balls" (August) story about spending a season as a gopher for Detroit Tigers ballplayers. Other men's magazines tend to view service features as part of their mix, not the whole thing, probably because it makes P.O.V. come across like another all-service title, Men's Health. No matter how well-written and informative -- and they are both -- they become interchangeable and somewhat bland.

"If you had to say we were one thing or another," Lane admits, "we probably would go down as a service book. What isn't a service book nowadays?"

He's got a point there, at least as far as newcomers go. Maxim's second issue was virtually all service. Verge, another new entry, is even subtitled "Essential Gear for Life." And Swing is very similar to P.O.V. in terms of pitching a work hard, play hard philosophy.

Lane, however, doesn't believe it's fair to compare his most excellent men's magazine to anyone else's, let alone the service-dominated women's titles.

"We are trying to provide our readers (with) service," he says, "but unlike women's magazines, we don't patronize and we don't pander to the lowest common denominator. There are some new titles in the men's magazine market that seem to think that is a good formula and just really sink to the lowest common denominator."

You wouldn't be referring to one edited by a woman, would you? Say, Maxim?

"You said it," he says. "I didn't. But, a woman who came from a women's magazine says it, to boot. And that's fine if they think that works. I am telling you that the guys I know and our readers don't want to be insulted, they are not stupid. I am not sure who Maxim is trying to get (as readers) other than people who maybe need to turn their brains down to medium or medium-rare or something when they are reading it."



What sort of man reads P.O.V.?

"Our focus is on a guy in his late twenties, professional, college-educated, has a job, wants to have a better job, is serious about his career and is serious about his social life as well, serious about playing sports, getting ahead at work, relationships, investments, the whole package. We are about people who just want to live a full life, and we are not trying to cut them down in any of those directions."

Let's talk content. P.O.V. typically runs celebrity pictures on its cover, but until recently never ran accompanying stories on the celeb. The photos always illustrated a greater theme from rating the coolness of a job (Beavis and Butt-head) to indulging one's vices (P.O.V. has added short interviews to complement its celebrity covers.

The feature that Lane says personifies P.O.V. is its "When I Was 25" column, which was launched from an April cover story. You might call it the "Old Fogeys Page," where men such as Ed Rollins, Scott Turow and Ed Bradley, who have long since left their 20s behind recall their glory days.

"We don't ask people to write for us who inherited their positions or were born in their position," Lane says. "The idea is to show our readers that we were all living in a dingy apartment at one time and we all started at an entry-level job. The fact is, there is no limit as to what you can accomplish and we show people who have gone on to be the best in their field. I think that is inspirational and that is what we are trying to do at P.O.V., in part: inspire our readers."

Now we're getting somewhere. Because the biggest difference between P.O.V. and older competitors such as GQ and Esquire is the age into which it was born. An educated young man 20 or 30 years ago probably expected to land a decent corporate job out of college with a firm that he might well stay with his entire career. Today, he's just as likely to go into business for himself right out of school or after getting some practical experience at a larger company.

It's a different world that young people are entering and Lane says that his background at Forbes gives him an advantage, an entrepreneurial bent that his older counterparts at other men's magazines may lack.

It's an attitude of "No one is going to take care of us, so we have to take care of ourselves."

"And so that is exactly what we are trying to do," Lane says, "empower our readers to take their lives into their own hands. We are trying to say, take charge yourself."

So don't hate him because he's arrogant. He's just doing his job.

© 2007 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.

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Clare McHugh, "Maxim" editor: Mr. Media Interview Classic

Originally published March 31, 1997

Does America really need another men's magazine?

Do men need another 172 pages every month or so telling us how to behave, how to get lucky more often, how to pick wine, who's hot and what's not?

If subsequent issues of a new magazine called Maxim are as ticklishly unsubtle as the first, the answer is a testosterone-cup-runneth-over yes.

Mr. Media reads piles of magazines each month, but the men's category is his favorite. Not for the pictures, either, although . . . The quality of writing in Playboy, Esquire, and GQ, for example, is generally excellent. But no matter how much older, wiser and wealthier Mr. Media gets, he never quite sees himself as the model reader for those publications. In his 20s, he thought he'd grow into that debonair, literate, sophisticated fella.

But now, in his mid-30s, all those guys seem much younger!

Maxim, on the other hand, is a perfect fit.




What makes it so different? Is it that Maxim is the American edition of a popular European magazine? Or could it be that this is the only major men's magazine in this country edited by a woman? A woman with a tree house sense of humor, that is, who could hang out and be accepted by your average bunch of guys talking sports, knocking back a few, checking out babes and scratching themselves. Okay, maybe not that last thing.

"I spent a lot of time studying men because I always wanted them to be interested in me and think I was good fun," says Maxim editor Clare McHugh.

McHugh, 35, certainly pushed the right buttons in her first issue. On the cover is Christa Miller, Drew Carey's TV gal pal; inside is a photo of Star Trek's Spock and Kirk; a directory of women who guest starred on "Seinfeld" and went on to greater glory -- providing an excuse to run Teri Hatcher's picture; a comparison between Macintosh and Windows users; and useful advice on buying lingerie for the woman in a man's life -- accompanied by 11 photos, natch.

But it's that very lingerie story -- "The Gift That Keeps On Giving" -- that spins the editor's gender. "It's a match made in heaven," reads the subhead. "Women love wearing lingerie; we love seeing it in action."

Not to be too picky, but if the editor is a woman, that sounds a little, um, funny.

"Some guy did write that," McHugh protests. "You have to assume the 'we' is a masculine voice. Besides, I don't think people will realize right off the bat that there is a woman editor."

C'mon! Mr. Media protests. There's a picture of you on page 16 over the headline, "So who's the chick?"

"I hadn't thought of that, really," McHugh says demurely, chuckling.

And it is a small point, but one that's important in a business where men's -- and women's -- magazine are closely identified with their editors -- Hugh Hefner is Playboy; Ed Kosner is Esquire; Art Cooper is GQ, Helen Gurley Brown was Cosmopolitan.

"Helen Gurley Brown is a brilliant editor because she really speaks to the readers where they are," McHugh says. "If I could wish for anything for Maxim it's that I could address men where they are, not in some idealized place or role of what masculinity is or means."





Staking out a piece of the newsstand to call her own, the fast-talking editor litters her magazine with politically incorrect lines her male counterparts couldn't pull off, such as "Hot Babe Management Tips."

"You've uncovered my secret!" she says, laughing. "I think I can get away with things that male editors can't."

Doesn't she care about potentially offending members of her own team?

"I don't care, in fact," she says rather bluntly. "In my mind, I think that if women are not upset by it, I'm doing something wrong. It was very important to strike a very male tone and attitude toward women. Not in an antagonistic way. But for lots of men, women are confusing and mysterious -- and also annoying! So we really had to write about women the way men thought. I'm not trying to explain women to men as much as I'm trying to address men's concerns about women."

McHugh's last job was launching another European import, Marie Claire, in an American edition. And her boss there was Bonnie Fuller, who recently stepped into Brown's fashionable shoes at Cosmo. Before that, McHugh worked her way up the Big Apple media food chain: New York Post, The New York Observer and New York magazine.




Joining a previously all-male fraternity, McHugh doesn't seem the least bit worried about comparisons with her "brother" magazines in the category, based on these blunt assessments:

Details -- "Cool. Maybe too cool."

Playboy -- "Nobody reads it just for the articles."

GQ -- "It's a fashion magazine."

Men's Health -- "A great magazine. Practical. It turns off people who aren't that interested in health. And it does tend to be the same issue over and over again."

Esquire -- "It's a literary magazine. For older gentlemen."

"Women's magazines in this country have done a better job of addressing women than men's magazines have done addressing men," McHugh says. "Men's magazines lag behind the development of men. I don't think men really changed through the ages. Feminism affected them in a way that it's given men more opportunities to do what they want. They don't have to fall into the stereotype of what it means to be masculine. You know, the good provider, the mountain warrior, the Hemingway wannabe. Other men's magazines address this heroic, iconic man, whereas most guys I know are very warm and interested in having a good time. They're in touch with themselves in that they know they like sports, they like women. They drink beer. They like to know stuff. They like to have a little something up their sleeves so they seem like experts. They don't spend a lot of time worrying if they're 'adequate' or not."

McHugh is surrounded by men, both at the office and at home. Beside her husband, renowned freelance writer Mark Lasswell, and their two-year-old son, Charlie, she also has two younger brothers and an "overpowering" father, who is a distinguished professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins.

Still, won't guys doubt you know what's going on?

"I hope to prove worthy of the job," McHugh says. "It is strange to edit a magazine for a group that you are not a member of. On the other hand, it does give me freedom and it's a new slant on doing men's content to have a woman's touch. I hope it works out for readers; I hope it works out for me."

© 2007 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.

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Rob Tannenbaum, "Details" contributing editor: Mr. Media Interview Classic

Originally Published November 4, 1996

In his fantasies, Details magazine contributing editor Rob Tannenbaum has a beautiful voice.

In reality, he has a beautiful . . . well, he types really well.

Have you ever read a magazine or newspaper story where a reporter steps into the shoes of someone in another line of work — as George Plimpton did, briefly playing for the Detroit Lions in researching his book, Paper Lion? The reporter naively suits up as a cab driver, pizza delivery driver or substitute teacher (three that Mr. Media tried as a young man), gets befuddled by the intricacies of the job, collects a few funny lines, writes a cutesy story and returns to journalism.

That was what Joe Dolce, Tannenbaum's editor at Details, must have expected when he assigned his writer a first-person story about what it was like to start a band and try to get noticed. Little did either of them guess that a year later, Tannenbaum and his faux sextet would have played a live gig at the legendary CBGB's nightclub in Manhattan, pressed a few
thousand copies of its original CD, "Everything is Fun," and be considering offers from major record labels.

"In the usual Plimpton story, the writer takes over an unfamiliar job, fails and learns empathy for the professional," Tannenbaum says. "The story is not supposed to work out where the amateur can actually do it."

Now Tannenbaum, a singer in the band White Courtesy Telephone, is considering whether or not he should throw away his writing career to be one of the boys in the band.

"It'd be crazy!" he says. "I've got a lucrative job -- would I want to trade this for five months of touring in a broken down bus with five guys with bad breath sleeping almost standing up every night? Well, I'm starting to think I'm crazy."

What's really crazy is that Tannenbaum, a former rock critic who started his career with the now-defunct Providence Eagle, has no musical aptitude whatsoever.

"I've never been accused of having musical talent," he readily admits. "As long as I've had friends, they've begged me not to sing with the radio -- which is one reason I'm doing this. It's rock 'n' roll -- you don't have to be prodigiously talented to be in rock 'n' roll.

"Of course," he adds, "if I took the same approach to being a sculptor, I'd be laughed out of the art world."




At 35, Tannenbaum might seem a little young for a career crisis, but that's exactly what he's going through.

For years, Tannenbaum has made a name for himself profiling pop and film stars such as REM, Aerosmith, Brian Eno, Nicolas Cage, Sean Penn, Christian Slater, Julia Roberts, Heather Locklear and Uma Thurman. He wrote the first Rolling Stone stories on bands such as Guns 'n Roses and Bon Jovi (in fact, Jon Bon Jovi used to thank him by ridiculing Tannenbaum during his concerts). He anticipated the Kiss revival in a GQ story two years ago. His Details cover story on Cindy Crawford became the best-selling issue in the magazine's history.

Then one day he gets up on the wrong side of the bed and he's writing and recording songs instead of reviewing them, hustling A&R reps from major labels and performing with White Courtesy Telephone at CBGB's -- "a momentous occasion" -- mumbling, talking, shouting and spitting his lyrics on the same microphone as the Ramones, Tom Verlaine and Debbie Harry.

And how is White Courtesy Telephone's CD, "Everything is Fun"?

It's eclectic, loud, irreverent and a pile of fun -- just what you'd expect from song titles such as "Stephen Hawking's Wheelchair," "Eat What You Kill" and Tannenbaum's somewhat original composition, "Cobain(e)," which he executes to the tune of Eric Clapton's "Cocaine."

"I was listening to the radio one day," Tannenbaum recalls, "and 'Cocaine' was on. But I heard, 'Cobain, dead rock star, dead rock star, dead rock star -- Cobain.' "

And if there's any doubt in your mind about Tannenbaum becoming a rocker, be warned that he's already affected a misunderstood artist attitude. "People miss a lot of the subtlety of what we're doing," he says, "the literary references . . . "

As in the rather crude ditty "Prison Wife"?

"You got me there," he says, laughing.




The toughest part of being in a band isn't the late nights, loud music, heavy drinking, groupies (he's got one) or begging record producers to listen to his CD. No, the hardest part is going from a neatly organized life to one of total anarchy.

"One of the things I've learned," Tannenbaum says, "is that rock bands don't have plans. The notion of a six-month plan doesn't happen in rock 'n' roll. So the other guys looked at me like an accountant because I tried doing all these organized things."

The biggest difference between Tannenbaum and a true amateur is that the other guy couldn't get his calls returned by the president of major record labels. Tannenbaum's reputation as a reporter carries weight with these people -- at the very least, they'll humor him. Never know when he might be back on the music beat, profiling Alanis, Bono or Madonna, right?

"I have been able to get the CD to people who might not have been accessible to garage musicians," he concedes. "And I don't know how much they're humoring me. Because I'm trying to get an honest response, I haven't told a lot of people this is for a story."

Tannenbaum's report on the unlikely career of White Courtesy Telephone is slated for the January issue of Details. By then, his journalism career could be a distant memory. On the other hand, he still sings like a typist.

"This has been the most confusing assignment I've ever had," he says. "I've had so much fun -- anticipation, adrenaline, money lust -- I'm unclear now which part is the story and which part is my desire and my fantasy. I'm not sure when I'll get my life back. I'm not sure if I want my life back.

"If worse comes to worse," Tannenbaum says, "I'll tour for a year -- then write about that."

© 2007 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.

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Joan Feeney, "CondeNet" editorial director: Mr. Media Interview Classic (1997)

Originally Published March 24, 1997

If one more person questions why Conde Nast magazines such as Glamour, Vogue, GQ and Details don't have their own Web sites, Joan Feeney may blow a blood vessel.

Ooops. Spoke too soon. "When I got in this business two and a half years ago, no one would ask that!" says Feeney, editorial director for CondeNet, the magazine company's online identity. "That knee-jerk attitude -- 'I have a print title, therefore I must have a Web site' -- where does this relationship come from?"

The reason Feeney, 38, hears these questions so often is that Conde Nast took an inside-out approach to Web content and design. While Time Warner, through its Pathfinder site, translates magazines such as Time, People and Entertainment Weekly directly to the Web, Conde Nast gave CondeNet a different mission: create unique online services that merely draw on the company's editorial products -- including Random House books -- not mirror them.

That's why, instead of seeing individual sites for Bon Appetit, Gourmet or Fodor's travel books, surfers find "Epicurious" sites for food and travel. And instead of dropping by GQ or Mademoiselle, they find themselves at "Swoon."

"We are uninterested in making electronic versions of our print titles," Feeney explains. "That doesn't make sense to us; it seems more a vanity operation than anything else. We are in business as a business, not as a hobby. So in order to satisfy consumers, bring them back, create a climate that advertisers will be interested in and make our customers happy, we create products that work in this medium."




As anyone who spends time regularly visiting the World Wide Web knows, Feeney's comments border on the heretical. In the last two years, the first commandment of print publishing became "Get thyself a Web site."

"These are people who don't have plans, who don't have business models," Feeney says, dismayed at a landscape littered with junk media. "I don't understand why they just slap things on the Web, what their motive is. They don't even have a goal for their sites, except to say, 'Everyone else has one and I don't want to be left behind.'

"People say, 'Why isn't Vogue online?' And I say, 'Why would it be?' Two years ago, no one assumed that if you had a title, it had to have a presence on the Web. I turn it around on people and say, 'Why don't you question your assumptions? Why are you assuming a magazine would work online?' "

So what is Conde Nast doing online?

Pretty clever stuff, actually.

"We asked ourselves, 'What works well on a computer?' " Feeney says. "A computer searches and a computer sorts. A computer parses information in a way that allows you to organize it in a manner that is significant to you. For example, our food site, Epicurious, has a recipe database of 5,000 recipes. If I look in the refrigerator and I have tea leaves, a lemon and flat club soda, what can I do with that? Type those ingredients into our database and find out! That's what a computer can do. A magazine can't do that, TV can't do that, a newspaper can't do that.

"I have access to most of the Bon Appetit and Gourmet recipes and I put them in a database, searchable by all kinds of characteristics. Say you go to the market and the zucchini, tomatoes and basil are all fresh and you buy them. Then you pull out a cookbook and look under 'tomato.' The recipes don't include zucchini and basil. Then you look through all your other cookbooks. By the time you're done, you're frustrated because you can't find anything that incorporates all the ingredients you're interested in. But type all of the ingredients into Epicurious -- excluding others you don't care for -- and you'll find a recipe."

Elsewhere in Epicurious are subtopics such as "Playing With Your Food," as well as restaurant reviews and a cyber-sommelier who recommends wines based on type and price. In "Gail's Recipe Swap," an interactive forum, readers exchange their own recipes and tips. From Epicurious Food you can also read selected Bon Appetit and Gourmet stories and columns.




On the Epicurious Travel site, the "Concierge" asks your criteria for a fabulous vacation. Golf or theater, island or mountain getaway? After giving the computer your preferences, it comes back with specific hotels that meet your requirements. The travel site jumps to story excerpts and photos from Conde Nast Traveler magazine.

Swoon, which captures lifestyle elements for men and women, is, as the name implies, relationship and romance related. Columnist "Jane Err" answers the lovelorn, while online personals and games such as "Love Match" connect you with potential mates.

"Personals are so brilliant online because you can search your preferences electronically," Feeney says. "If you want to read individual ads, you're welcome to, but if you want to say your dreamboat or honey is 6-4, has blond hair and blues eyes, I could find that person online in a heartbeat. That's a very powerful use of the technology."

From Swoon you can also read portions of Glamour, Mademoiselle, GQ and Details.
Much of the content of Epicurious Food, Travel, Swoon and an upcoming women's health and nutrition site, "Phys," appeals to women, who often don't see much of interest to them online.

"Women are very purposeful on the Web," Feeney says. "They aren't there to kill time. They want to leave a session with a sense of having derived benefits from the time they invested. I think our sites deliver those benefits."

© 2007 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.

Chris Napolitano, "Playboy Magazine" editor: Mr. Media Interview, Pt. 2

(RETURN TO PART 1!!!)

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.