Theatrics, Outtakes, and Scene-stealers

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Nov 1, 2002

time after time

Humorist Joel Stein has been MIA since his Time magazine column got canned in the comedy-free months after 9/11. In the new era of self-sacrifice, a column about Stein's favorite subject - himself - didn't quite fly with managing editor Jim Kelly, although it ran, off and on, for months. Now Stein is being shipped off to sister publication Entertainment Weekly to make a new start. He steps in just as new EW managing editor Rick Tetzeli arrives from another Time Inc. title, Fortune, to replace longtime editor Jim Seymore. It was widely reported in September that EW staffers were "by and large unhappy that an insider was not chosen" to replace Seymore. Perhaps Stein was brought in to cheer them up with his one-liners.

maxim presents: synergy!

Just because AOL Time Warner and Talk Miramax lost their mojo doesn't mean that synergy is dead: Maxim magazine has hopped in the sack with New Line Cinema, forming a joint venture called "Maxim Presents." (See Q&A Quickie on page 15.) It harkens back to the legendary "National Lampoon Presents," which brought us "Animal House" and "Vacation" (that's '70s synergy, folks).

walking the talk

On October 3, former Talk magazine queen bee Tina Brown penned her first newspaper column for The London Times. In it she recalled the litany of dot-com-era moguls she had once lunched with, most now washed-up. Among the tastier bits: She revealed a scandalous e-mail that former AOL Time Warner's Jerry Levin received from Time magazine art critic Robert Hughes in the wake of that company's woes: "How can you face yourself knowing how much history, value, and savings you have thrown away on your mad, ignorant attempt to merge with a wretched dial-up ISP?" Ouch!