The (Magazine) Producers
: Ad Age’s Randall Rothenberg is dying for Michael Wolff and Donny Deutsch to take over New York:
If there’s anything we’ve learned about the periodicals business in the past two decades, it’s that consumer magazines fare best when run by impresarios….
Magazines are vaudeville. Done right they offer a mixture of low comedy, melodrama and high-wire acts. In a good glossy, every element of Aristotelian theatre is present — hubristic ambition cut short, buffoonery rewarded, a heavy dose of “I-wish-I-could-be-her-but-I’m-glad-I’m-not-him” catharsis. … Our vaudeville is in magazines, and our Minskys are the proprietors (and proprietary editors) who produce them.
