Conde Nast Inks WTC Deal

Aspirational magazine publisher Conde Nast has signed the long-awaited deal to assume over one million square feet of office space in One World Trade Center, which when completed will be the tallest skyscraper in the nation.

The lease marked the largest single tenant to be brought into Lower Manhattan in years. The project is being developed by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which sold an ownership stake to the Durst Organization. “We hope Condé Nast, at long last united into a single building, will be the catalyst for the rebirth of the downtown area,” Newhouse told a crowd of reporters and elected officials standing in the bare concrete, window-clad floor of the tower — one of the floors being leased by his company.

Such an act takes a major load off the back of the Port Authority, which is seeking to lease up a building that comes with a long list of challenges. One World Trade Center is surely worth far less that it costs to build (the tower was valued last year at $2 billion, while its construction price tag is over $3 billion). It undeniably causes anxiety over future terrorism among potential tenants. At present, there is just one other private tenant, for 190,000 square feet, signed on to the 2.6 million-square-foot building.

Thousands of clackers are surely sobbing in their Times Square cubes. Quick, somebody get three thousand feet of velvet rope to Ground Zero, stat!

NEW YORK: Sen. Ruben Diaz Launches Boycott Of Gay-Friendly Spanish Paper

Last week New York's most widely-read Spanish-language newspaper, El Diario, published an editorial supporting marriage equality and obliquely criticizing state Sen. Ruben Diaz for his upcoming anti-gay rally. Yesterday Diaz announced that he will be spearheading a boycott of the paper because of their supposedly anti-Christian positions.

The Newspaper, El Diario La Prensa, calls itself “The Champion of the Hispanics.” But you will never read or find a reporter from El Diario La Prensa covering one of the hundreds of events that we Evangelical Christians celebrate throughout the year. They never cover or report news about the Grand Evangelical Children’s Parade that is held every year. They never cover a celebration of Bishops Day or The Day of the Superintendents. They never cover a single Pastors Day of the many that occur throughout the year. They never send a reporter to cover any of the great campaigns of evangelists such as Yiye Avila, Jorge Raschke or many other great evangelists. And they never cover the New York Hispanic Clergy Organization’s Annual Banquet which is held to honor our pastors and leaders. All our activities are geared to help prevent crime in our communities, for example, taking drug addicts, prostitution and criminals off the street, but El Diario La Prensa does not care. But when it comes to an event regarding homosexuals or an event in favor of abortion, even if there are four people attending, El Diario La Prensa highlights these events on its front pages.

According to Diaz, every fifty cents spent to purchase a copy of El Diario is money spent to support abortion and gay marriage.

TIME Copies Hitler Cover

New York Times Announces Paywall

Beginning March 28th, you'll be allowed to read exactly twenty New York Times articles per month. After that, you've gotta pay.

Once readers click on their 21st article, they will have the option of buying one of three digital news packages — $15 for a month of access to the Web site and a mobile phone app; $20 for Web access and an iPad app; and $35 for an all-access plan. All subscribers who receive the paper through home delivery will have free and unlimited access across all Times digital platforms except, for now, e-readers like the Amazon Kindle and the Barnes & Noble Nook. “A few years ago it was almost an article of faith that people would not pay for the content they accessed via the Web,” Arthur Sulzberger Jr., chairman of The New York Times Company, said in his annual State of The Times remarks, which were delivered to employees on Thursday morning.

Even the Times itself is unsure if this will work.

The debate consuming the newspaper business now centers on the question that The Times hopes to answer: Can you reverse 15 years of consumer behavior and build a business around online subscriptions? Many believe the answer is no. No American news organization as large as The Times has attempted to put its content behind a pay wall after allowing unrestricted access. The move is being closely watched by anxious publishers, which have warily embraced the Web and struggled with how to turn online journalism into a profitable business.

This raises an interesting dilemma for bloggers, who even if they subscribe, may hesitate to excerpt articles that their readers may not be able to access in full.

UDPATE: Andrew Sullivan notes the exception for stories linked by blogs, which I totally missed.

If I read it correctly, it almost privileges links from blogs and social media against more direct access. Which makes it a gift to the blogosphere. Anyway, that's my first take: and it's one of great relief. We all want to keep the NYT in business (well, almost all of us). But we also don't want to see it disappear behind some Great NewsCorp-Style Paywall. It looks to me as if they have gotten the balance just about right.

SAN DIEGO: Publisher Of Defunct LGBT Newspaper Dead Of Apparent Suicide

The body of Michael Portantino, the publisher of San Diego's recently defunct Gay & Lesbian Times, has been found outside a local gay hotel. The San Diego County coroner is calling it an apparent suicide.

The decedent was a 52 year old single White male who resided in a home in San Diego. On 12/08/10, he apparently jumped from a building and landed on the cement walkway before his body was discovered by passersby. 9-1-1 was called and medics arrived and confirmed the death without intervention due to the obvious signs of trauma. The examination is being conducted today 12/09/10.

The hotel has only six floors. Prior to his paper's closure, Portantino's competitors had publicly accused the title of inflating its circulation numbers to advertisers.

UPDATE: San Diego's "ex-gay" loon and multiple felon James Hartline is celebrating Portantino's death on Twitter and has posted the below 2008 clip of a group of Hartline-led Christianists protesting a proposed declaration of Gay & Lesbian Times Day by the San Diego city council.


(Via - Rex Wockner)

British Newspaper's "Win The Cover" Contest Results In Gay Marriage Proposal

The British version of Metro, a free daily newspaper, held a contest in which the winning reader would be allowed to use the front page for whatever reason they liked. The winner decided to use the space to propose to his boyfriend of five years. Here's how his partner got the news.

Having missed out on his own copy from the station on his way through, it was a fellow Tube passenger's Metro that caught Ben's eye. Clocking his name, the 23-year-old panicked at the sight of it on the front cover. 'I don't always get a Metro at my station - depending on the time of the morning there can be hardly any left,' he explained. 'So I didn't get a Metro this morning and, on the train, this guy was reading it in front of me. 'Then I saw my name and I thought "what?" I sort of blinked twice, then I'm looking around for a Metro - I gave up my seat to try to find one. 'When I found one and saw the front cover properly it was a shock - and as soon as I got above ground again at Marble Arch I had five or six missed calls on my phone from people asking if I'd seen it.' Ben eventually gave his partner a resounding 'YES' when the pair were able to get through to each other a few hours later - after Ben initially texted Jon with the promise: 'I'm going to kill you!'

The couple says they may tie the knot on their next anniversary in May.

Best-Selling Books By Politicians

Dubya's memoir launches today and The Daily Beast has ranked the best-selling books by politicians in the last ten years. Dubya's publisher is shipping 1.5M copies for the initial run, but of course no one knows if those will actually sell through.

Literature Death Watch

(Source)

Bob Guccione Dies At Age 79

Bob Guccione, founder of Penthouse Magazine and the man whose spectacular flop Caligula introduced hetero movie audiences to fisting, has died at the age of 79.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1930, Guccione started Penthouse in the mid-1960s. By the 1980s, he had created a $300 million media business and Penthouse had a circulation of 4.7 million, according to the New York Times. Marc Bell, chief executive officer of FriendFinder Networks Inc., which now publishes Penthouse and runs adult websites, called the death “very sad” in an e-mailed statement. The company plans to release a statement today, he said. Penthouse’s first issue hit newsstands in the U.K. in 1965 and went on sale in the U.S. in 1969, according to Biography.com. The magazine challenged the popularity of Playboy, a men’s magazine that had gained widespread following, by featuring photos and content that were intended to be more explicit and provocative.

Back in one of my writing classes in college, students held an unauthorized Penthouse Forum contest. All entries were required to contain the rote phrases "much to my surprise" and "needless to say," which appeared in almost all every issue. Much to my surprise, when I opened the door there stood two buxom blond twins! Needless to say, I invited them in. I recall arguing for the inclusion of the equally overused "endless gobs of ropey cum," but I was denied.

I still miss Guccione's excellent science/sci-fi title, Omni Magazine.

Tweet Of The Day - James Hartline

"Ex-gay" whackadoodle and multiple felon James Hartline is claiming credit for this week's shuttering of the San Diego Gay & Lesbian Times. Of course, the paper's closure had absolutely nothing to do with James Hartline, but facts and lying matter little to San Diego's "leading warrior for Christ" (his self-awarded title.) We're still waiting on Hartline's promised Broadway musical The Chronicles Of Sodom, BTW.

Essence Magazine Publishes Online Photo Essay Of Lesbian Wedding

With the guidance of GLAAD, Essence Magazine, which is aimed at black females, has published an online photo essay of a lesbian wedding. The article includes a profile of how the women met and later married in Washington DC. This is a first for the magazine.

James Franco For Candy Magazine

Copyranter points out James Franco's cover shot for the first issue of Candy Magazine, "the first transversal style magazine." One thousand copies only, street date October 24th.

New Jersey Jewish Paper Vows Not To Run Any More Gay Wedding Announcements

The Jewish Standard says that it is SO very sorry to have run that gay wedding announcement and won't be doing that again.

We set off a firestorm last week by publishing a same-sex couple’s announcement of their intent to marry. Given the tenor of the times, we did not expect the volume of comments we have received, many of them against our decision to run the announcement, but many supportive as well. A group of rabbis has reached out to us and conveyed the deep sensitivities within the traditional/Orthodox community to this issue. Our subsequent discussions with representatives from that community have made us aware that publication of the announcement caused pain and consternation, and we apologize for any pain we may have caused. The Jewish Standard has always striven to draw the community together, rather than drive its many segments apart. We have decided, therefore, since this is such a divisive issue, not to run such announcements in the future.

Reader responses appears uniformly against the ban.

Alyson Books Goes Digital-Only

Long-running LGBT publishing house Alyson Books is restructuring as an e-books only company following its acquisition by Here Media several years ago. Many of Alyson's authors have long-overdue books, including Village Voice columnist Michael Musto, who went very public with his complaints last month.

John Knoebel, v-p of consumer marketing at Here Media, has been named interim publisher until a new digital publisher can be found. Knoebel said he doesn't expect Alyson to begin publishing e-books for nine to 12 months. "We want to develop a strategy that makes sense," he said, adding that Here Media would like to have the new publisher on board and involved with creating the new business model. The recruitment of a digital publisher "could take some time," Knoebel said. Over the next few days Alyson will be reaching out to the authors it has under contract and whose books they have not published to give them the option of getting their rights back or moving ahead with Alyson's digital program. "We know authors are working in different circumstances," Knoebel said. "We hope some will stick with us." Alyson has about 24 authors under contract whose books have not yet been released. Alyson has not published new print books since fall 2009.

NY Times To Stop Printing (Someday)

The New York Times will cease production of its print edition relatively soon according to its publisher.

"We will stop printing the New York Times sometime in the future, date TBD," Arthur Sulzberger told an audience at a London media summit Wednesday. Sulzberger's statement came in response to a prediction that the newspaper would go out-of-print by 2015. "This sounds obvious, but it's a big deal," Business Insider founder Henry Blodget wrote. "The economics of the online news business will not support the infrastructure or newsroom that the printed paper supports. Unless the New York Times Company can come up with a miracle new digital revenue stream, therefore, it will eventually have to be restructured and downsized.

Early next year the Times will install a metered paywall on its website in which users will be able to read a limited number of free articles before being forced to subscribe.

XY Magazine To Destroy Subscriber Info

Last month the Federal Trade Commission issued an unprecedented warning to the owners of the defunct XY Magazine, telling them that a plan to sell its massive subscriber list could endanger some of the title's former readers who still lived with their parents. JMG reader Band tips us today that the magazine's publisher has agreed to destroy those records.

The agreement highlights an important issue that sits below the surface of the digital economy. As companies close and buy and sell to one another, the fate of the valuable user data everyone holds becomes an issue. Most privacy policies are unclear about this issue or do allow for transfer of personal information to new owners. But as the tracking and ad targeting technologies online become more sophisticated, user profiles will be come denser and more valuable.

At its peak, XY Magazine and its companion gay youth dating site may have had as many as one million subscribers.

And The Conde Nasties Weep

After weeks of rumors, today the New York Times confirms that Conde Nast is ready to ink a deal to move its fleet of aspirational magazines and their accompanying army of snooty clackers away from their present midtown location and into One World Trade Center. Where they will be miles away from anything remotely hip! Oh noes!

The deal to bring Condé Nast to the building once known as the Freedom Tower would signal a remarkable turnaround for a project that had been considered a marketing nightmare. The 1,776-foot-tall skyscraper will be the tallest building in New York when it is completed in 2013. If the deal goes through, employees of Condé Nast — publisher of Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Vogue and 15 other magazines — would move in 2014 from their current home in Times Square. The company, which currently occupies 800,000 square feet at 4 Times Square, notified its employees in a memo Tuesday morning that it was in “active negotiations” to move to 1 World Trade Center but a final decision was several months away. After years of delay, the steel latticework for the $3.2 billion building is rising hundreds of feet into the skyline. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the building, recently renamed it 1 World Trade Center. The authority is hoping that Condé Nast will bring the same kind of cachet to a rebuilt trade center that the publisher brought to a dowdy Times Square in the late 1990s.

Conde Nast would occupy more than one-third of the massive tower. Quick, somebody get three thousand feet of velvet rope to Ground Zero, stat!

Newsweek Sells For $1

The Washington Post has sold Newsweek to electronics billionaire Sidney Harman for $1 in return for his pledge to assume the struggling title's liabilities and retain most of its staff.

Newsweek has struggled through the recession more than most weekly news magazines, losing nearly $30 million last year alone. It was earning that much a year as recently as 2007. And the longer it remained on the market, the less tenable its financial situation became. It has been an expensive product for the Post Company to produce, with its various international editions and separate back-office positions that were specific to the magazine. Instead of sharing a general counsel and accounting staff with the Post Company, for example, Newsweek has its own employees in those positions. The magazine’s top editors and managers redesigned it last year in hopes of attracting more readers and advertisers. But the updated magazine, which contained more commentary and analysis on the news of the week, failed to catch on.

Harman, who is 91, is married to Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA).

Feds Warn Owners Of Defunct Gay Youth Magazine Not To Sell Mailing List

Calling it a "major threat" to public safety, the Federal Trade Commission has issued an unusual warning to the owners of the defunct gay youth title XY Magazine, noting that since many of their former subscribers probably live with their parents, they could be endangered by the sale of its mailing list.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has warned two people associated with a now-defunct magazine and Web site for gay teens and young men that they would violate the privacy promises the publication made to subscribers by selling their personal information during a bankruptcy proceeding. The FTC, in a letter sent earlier this month, also suggested that the owners of XY Magazine and XY.com would be violating the privacy standards the company had in place before shutting down if they used the subscribers' personal information in a relaunch of the magazine or Web site. The personal information is listed as part of the debtor's estate in a New Jersey bankruptcy proceeding for Peter Ian Cummings, editor and founder of the magazine. XY Magazine's subscription form said it "never sells its list to anybody." XY.com told prospective subscribers that their magazines would be mailed in shrink-wrapped black plastic so that subscribers' parents couldn't tell what they were getting. XY.com users were told that personal information they submitted "will not be published," the FTC said.

XY Magazine, which published from 1996-2007, claims it possesses the names, email addresses, and street addresses of between 500,000 and one million former readers. The FTC's warning is an astonishingly positive move to protect LGBT youth. Amazing, really.

Take This And Eat It

The Plaid Crew comments on the new issue of Vermont Catholic:

This is the actual cover of the current issue of Vermont Catholic magazine, the monthly publication put out by the Diocese of Burlington. No joke. Less than a week after an almost-$18 million settlement with the remaining 26 plaintiffs (you know, all those kids who were diddled by priests for decades while the Church pretended it didn't know what was going on?), these guys put a photo of a young man kneeling in front of the Bishop on the cover of their damn magazine. Given the context, this is a loaded (PUN!) image, and someone in the chain of command should have caught this.

(Via - Andrew Sullivan)