Alpha Media has shuttered its music magazine Blender, according to Ad Age. Ad pages for the musically omnivorous, list-happy mag had gone down some 57% between January and April of this year, one that’s proven rough going for glossies of all stripes. Blender editor Joe Levy—who came to the mag from Rolling Stone a little more than a year ago—will move over to Alpha’s lone remaining title, Maxim, where he’ll become editor. (Disclaimer: I wrote a few record reviews for Blender long ago.) UPDATE: Press release announcing the changes at Alpha—including Levy’s job-switch and the news that Blender.com will “continue as a digital destination”—after the jump. [Ad Age]
MAXIM AND MAXIM DIGITAL EDITORIAL TEAMS INTEGRATED TO ALLOW FOR MORE CONTENT DEVELOPMENT AND COVERAGE
Joe Levy Named Editor in Chief and Jay Woodruff Named Chief Content Officer of Maxim
BLENDER MAGAZINE CEASES PUBLICATION
New York, NY (March 26, 2009) - Maxim and Maxim.com editorial operations have been integrated, it was announced today by Alpha Media Group CEO, Stephen Duggan. Joe Levy has been named Editor in Chief and Jay Woodruff has been named Chief Content Officer of Maxim, the largest young men’s lifestyle brand in America. The integrated editorial operation establishes Maxim as a leader of a 21st Century media strategy that includes print, digital, mobile, television and film.Joe Levy was previously Editor in Chief of Blender and Jay Woodruff was Editor in Chief of Maxim Digital.
In a joint statement, Levy and Woodruff said, “The Maxim audience consumes content on multiple platforms that are constantly evolving. We are committed to delivering the Maxim experience to more and more users in ways that extend beyond the printed page and website.”
Maxim is the largest young men’s lifestyle magazine in America reaching more than 13 million readers each month. Maxim Digital encompasses Maxim.com, Blender.com and Stuffmagazine.com and reaches more than 3 million unique visitors each month. Maxim is published in 43 countries; Maxim Radio with Covino and Rich is broadcast on Sirius XM Satellite radio.
Separately, the company announced that Blender magazine will cease publication with the April issue; Blender.com will continue as a digital destination.
“Blender has provided unmatched music coverage and entertainment news in its unique voice to a profoundly dedicated audience of music enthusiasts since 2001. However, given the reality of the current economic climate, we are unable to continue publication,” Mr. Duggan said. “We are grateful to the sales team and to the tremendously talented editorial staff for their hard work and commitment to Blender.”
[Release via FishbowlNY]
@Cam/ron: It used to be my theory that generalist titles like Blender would likely be the first to go in the current economic attrition, while genre-specialist titles would survive by catering to the hardcore - they wouldn’t do great, but they wouldn’t go under, either. Of course, that was before Metal Edge and Metal Maniacs shut down and Jazziz went quarterly (I haven’t seen a public announcement of the latter, but I’m a contributor so I know).
@jt.ramsay: Yeah, for real. You guys get them, too? I have Time and Paste and a few others, and I’m pretty sure I never signed up for them.
I used to love Blender- great reviews, and interesting interviews with bands I didn’t know. But we didn’t renew it this year, because, 1) too much Rob Sheffield, and he’s just not that interesting, 2) every issue was a Little Wayne issue, and he’s just not that interesting, 3) more and more emphasis on cute girl of the month and/or Fall Out Boy, and less and less on music.
On another note, what happened to Rock Critically Correct? Is that also no more due to economic conditions?
@saturn: The Lil Wayne thing became some sort of running joke/desperate newsstand sales grab hybrid by the end of last year. For the $8 or whatever it took for a subscription, I appreciated the big artist back catalog review features, most of Sheffield’s stuff and those recent free song downloads through Rhapsody.
Now Lil Wayne and the third lead on 90210 can share a cover on Maxim!
Comment from anonymous friend who does promotions: “I seriously don’t know what places are going to be left for me to pitch my clients to at the end of this year.”
It’s amazing to me how quickly Blender came to define ’00s pop criticism and then couldn’t keep up. It’s like Fast Company or one of the other late-’90s Web 1.0 bibles, in the speed with which it boomed and died. I mean, all general-interest entertainment/music magazines are getting hammered by this recession. But I think it’s telling that Blender was the first pure-music title to die.
I think it also explains why, much as we scoff at them when they do it, Rolling Stone fluffs its Boomer base with those regular stories on oldster acts in the middle of the book - Pink Floyd one month, Rush the next, with no news hook. It’s a fiscally smart strategy to keep the aging base subscribing. By contrast, Blender relied on exactly the sort of very modern, post-Boomer acts I care about, and I guess that proved to be the kiss of death.
kind of a shame. after 05 or 06 i think it fell off in terms of a few qualities, and i haven’t read it in forever, but still a bummer in a way.
plus i never got to write for it.
loved doug wolk’s back-of-the-book catalogue run-downs. those were CLASSIC.
There was a collective gasp in my office when the news broke, like a friend just got kicked in the nuts by a donkey at a carnival type gasp, not oh God they’re dead. Unexpected to be sure.
I got this issue from my brother who started receiving it after his subscription to the now defunct Stuff Magazine was terminated. He tossed it at me because he knew I liked the magazine and Kelly Clarkson (is it a collectors issue now?) and I thought, this is getting slimmer and slimmer to the point that it will disappear to nothing. Shoulda watched my mouth eh?
The magazine as a whole was a nice departure from Rolling Stone and the other music magazines because it always searched for the upcoming and current talent and lauded the ones we thought were the talent (they would be gloriously highlighted as one hit wonders etc) by combining humor and genuine love of music in one big place. My radio show I originally titled The Blender but feared the copyright gods, guess it’s fair game now huh?
Blender, you’ll be missed.
@raycummings: They really were well-done. I agreed with them so much it was scary. However, the ones he didn’t do weren’t so good. The Kinks one was just terrible. Kinda Kinks a one star album?! Pshaw.
@BaseballBookshelf: The thing about Sheffield was that he wrote as though his opinions were so obviously shared by everyone that he didn’t need to defend them. And they just weren’t. I was glad he tracked down Vince Clarke in a small town in Maine, though.
@saturn: Yeah, critics should kowtow to public taste every time out. Oh wait, that’s what Blender did for 9/10ths of its existence.
I mean, wow. I thought Blender is the one that was working. Damn.
Ugh, awful news.
(I’ve written a handful of record reviews for Blender, too.)
A friend of mine has a subscription and I usually flip through an issue whenever I’m over there hanging out — last couple issues were so skinny on first glance I thought it was some kind of ad or supplemental insert.
@raihala: A lot of their content I could do without, but I always found the review section to be full of great writers and pretty good commentary.
This is really sad. I agree with Lucas, they did have a lot of really smart reviewers with interesting takes on the albums they wrote about.
The latest issue, pictured above, showed up in my mailbox last weekend even though I have no recollection of ordering a subscription (same thing with Rolling Stone). I wonder if my phantom subscription will be converted to Maxim.
@Chris B.: I’ve been calling these “zombie subscriptions” as some of them seem to have come back from the dead. A more pious man might call them “Lazarus subscriptions.” Your call.
@Lucas Jensen: I worked with a couple great, talented editors there, too. The experience of trying to write an informative, opinionated and funny review in something like 120 words was a real challenge that made me a better writer. (That, plus as much as I hate to admit it, the four years spent working for a Gannett paper.)
It did always make me laugh, though, when my byline would run on the same page as an ad for sex furniture.
It’s sad to see a heavyweight go down, speaking as somebody involved in the music magazine world. They had fine reviews and a very memorable VH1 show, “Awesomely Bad Songs” (great call on “We Built This City”). It’s scary to think that if the giants are closing down, what about the small indie magazines that are struggling to stay alive?
@rob-tannenbaum: Having criticized one of your writers, I will say that overall Blender was very well written. I often read bits out loud to my husband, becuase of the great comic timing.
We genuinely loved the reviews. To me, a sign of a good music critic is one who makes a band I’ve never heard of, or one I don’t like, interesting or appealing. Blender reviewers often did that.
The reasons we cancelled our subscription this year(and therefore are part of the reason it failed)are:
1. The feature content was becoming repetetive.
2. The news content was stale. An isuse would arrive, announcing the reunion of a band, and I would have already read about it, and about the subsequent break-up of said reunion, on this site.
3. There seemed to be fewer music reviews.
I’ve ignored all insults and provocations I’ve seen online, but I’m calling bullshit on Matos, on behalf of my writers.
Your thesis is that Bob Christgau, Jon Pareles, Ann Powers, Ben Ratliff, Douglas Wolk, Kelefa Sanneh, Jon Caramanica, Jon Dolan, Carl Wilson, Ben Sisario, Sia Michel, Chris Norris, Paul Du Noyer, Dorian Lynskey, Joshua Clover, Rob Harvilla, Chuck Eddy, Melissa Maerz, David Gates, kris ex, Simon Reynolds, Jody Rosen, among others, plus my dudes Jonah Weiner and Josh Eells, and, damn right, I kowtow to public taste? I’ll credit you for the originality of your thesis, because I don’t think that accusation has ever been filed about any of those critics.
Blender had the strongest roster of rock critics any magazine had called on in decades. As a result, we were able to publish the most entertaining, informative, reliable and comprehensive review section of any music magazine in the last decade. I did not assign to people liable to kowtow, nor did I require them to kowtow.
I understand that people have animus towards the magazine; it’s not the first time I’ve heard it. And since I had a forum much broader than the carpers did, I always ignored it. Today, thinking back on the writers I was happy to assign, edit and publish, I’m not prepared to ignore such nonsense.
@rob-tannenbaum: My thesis is that your magazine, collectively, exuded a frat-boy entitlement I found gross. I didn’t say anything about individual writers and was, in fact, cracking a casual joke on the internet, but hey.
@Michaelangelo Matos: You missunderstand me. I don’t want critics to kowtow to public taste. I want critics to convince me. Blender did that sometimes, and not others. I objected to the Wheezy coverage, not beacuse of who he was or his music, but because I felt like I was paying for an identical magazine to be shipped to me each month.
I particularly objected to Sheffield, because of Station to Station articles like this [www.blender.com]
It’s got statements like “Madonna, who has more personality than any pop star ever” and “And her decision to sing about banging strangers, as opposed to the joys of parenthood, is a heartening development for music lovers everywhere. “Candy Shop” is the sort of track she might have put on her demo tape for that Danceteria DJ in 1982. After 25 years of being Madonna, her sugar is raw.”
To which I say, “What?” I honestly don’t get Madonna’s appela today. She seems to have zero personalaity. I watched her Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction speech and she was more robo than machine. And what is raw about what she’s doing now?
I just don’t find him convincing.
I had a 6-month trial subscription to Blender once. They were OK, but I didn’t renew after my last issue (the “1000 Best Songs Since You Were Born”, which was apparently the magazine’s best selling issue). But it seems like in the past few months every magazine i’ve subscribed to in the past has shuttered. First it was “Computer Gaming World” (which at the time had been rebranded “Games for Windows”), then underrated video game cheat magazine “Tips & Tricks”, then my beloved “Electronic Gaming Monthly”. Now “Blender”. If this trend continues, then “PC Gamer”, “McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern”, “Paste” (all of which I subscribe to now. Yes, even “Paste”) and “SPIN” (which I cancelled after Chuck Klosterman and Sia Michel were fired) better watch out.
Here’s an obituary from Bob Christgau, who I’m sure read Blender more closely than most people commenting on the Internet:
[www.najp.org]
Loved it. Subscribed from day one. Sad to see it go. Even more sad that the two years left on my subscription are probably going to be rolled over to Maxim. Ugh.