January 6, 2005 Time launches online archive, giving the magazine’s readers access to over 266,000 articles from as early as 1923.
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January 25, 2005 Charlie McCurdy, former Primedia president and Apprise Media principal, buys Beckett, publisher of magazines for sports-collectible enthusiasts, for more than $20 million.
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April 12, 2005 To much fanfare, Condé Nast launches Domino, its latest offering in the home-improvement field.
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April 13, 2005 A little over a month after her release from prison, Martha Stewart re-emerges to accept a National Magazine Award in the General Excellence Category for Martha Stewart Weddings. (Needless to say, The New Yorker won practically every other prize). |
April 15, 2005 After nearly 150 years in Boston, the legendary New England literary magazine The Atlantic Monthly announces it will be moving to Washington, D.C. Most of the magazine’s writers and editors, including veteran managing editor Cullen Murphy, choose to leave the magazine rather than move with it.
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May 18, 2005 The on-again-off-again magazine Radar, backed by Mort Zuckerman and Jeffery Epstein, relaunches with promises of glory and riches for all.
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May 24, 2005 Gruner + Jahr, the German magazine publishing powerhouse, sells most of its American magazines to Meredith Corporation for $350 million, effectively ending its foray into the U.S. magazine market. Included in the sale: Parents, Child, Fitness and Family Circle.
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June 27, 2005 Billionaire financier Joe Mansueto jumps onto the magazine-buying bandwagon, snapping up Inc. and Fast Company for the bargain price of $35 million. Former owners Gruner + Jahr bought the magazines five years back for $500 million. Ouch! |
June 30, 2005 Under threat of fines and jail time for one of its reporters, Time Inc.’s editor-in-chief, Norman Pearlstine, agrees to comply with a court order requiring that the magazine turn over subpoenaed documents to a federal grand jury investigating who leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame.
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July 6, 2005 Time’s Matt Cooper agrees to testify in the Plame case, telling the judge he received a last-minute call from his confidential sources freeing him from his confidentiality agreements. |
July 18, 2005 New York magazine propels escort Natalia McLennan to infamy by running a cover story with a picture of her under the heading “N.Y.’s #1 Escort Reveals All.”
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July 20, 2005 In a wide-ranging magazine-industry scandal, more than 100 magazines are obliged to reduce their circulation claims, following an Audit Bureau of Circulations ruling, disqualifying two subscription sales agents that failed to pay publishers for distributed copies. |
July 21, 2005 Reader’s Digest celebrates its 1000th issue with a party DJed by actors Christian Slater and Maggie Gyllenhaal.
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July 23, 2005 Leroy “Bum” Peeples, president of Source Entertainment, which owns the hip-hop monthly The Source, and Alvin Childs, The Source’s marketing director, are arrested following a shooting incident outside a bar. |
July 25, 2005 Jane Pratt, founder and editor-in-chief of Jane, announces her intent to step down. Rumors swirl about how voluntary her decision really was.
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July 27, 2005 Based on evidence garnered from the July 18 issue of New York magazine, police arrest Natalia McLennan on charges of money laundering and prostitution. She is ultimately convicted and sentenced to prison. And who said, “There’s no such thing as bad publicity”? |
August 8, 2005 Primedia sells its business-publications unit (including over 70 titles and websites) to Wasserstein & Co. for $385 million. All of a sudden, Wasserstein is starting to look decidedly Murdochian.
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September 1, 2005 Rodale announces that it will fold the four-year-old healthy lifestyle monthly Organic Style. |
September 6, 2005 Condé Nast sires a little brother for Vogue: Men’s Vogue, targeting 35-year-old men earning over $100,000 dollars a year, launches as a quarterly. The metrosexual trend seems to be alive and well.
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September 8, 2005 Penthouse founder Bob Guccione’s son, Bob Jr., buys the science monthly Discover from Disney Publications. No comment on whether Discover will be shifting its focus toward the science of anatomy anytime soon.
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December 14, 2005 Mort Zuckerman and Jeffrey Epstein pull the plug on Radar just seven months after its much publicized relaunch, once again leaving Maer Roshan in search of a sugar daddy. |
December 18, 2005 Time names Bono and Bill and Melinda Gates its Persons of the Year.
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February 1, 2006 The United States of America apparently remains as puritanical as ever—the 2006 Hollywood issue of Vanity Fair prompts condemnation as well as ballyhoo when actors Keira Knightley and Scarlett Johansson appear nude on the cover, along with a clad Tom Ford. |
February 9, 2006 On the off chance that readers just can’t get their fill of gossip reading The New York Post’s Page Six, media mogul Rupert Murdoch launches Page Six The Magazine. Needless to say, Angelina Jolie graces the inaugural issue’s cover.
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February 13, 2005 The Shape of the Future? Emap, a UK magazine publisher, launches Mooky, a “digital video magazine” that can be downloaded onto iPods.
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February 14, 2006 Budget Living magazine doesn’t feel the love this Valentine’s Day, as founder Don Welsh folds the three-year-old magazine. Its various awards ultimately weren’t enough to stave off the number crunchers.
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February 22, 2006 Court documents reveal that Michael Caruso’s departure from Men’s Journal was not quite as voluntary as it seemed—the magazine’s former editor-in-chief files suit against Jann Wenner and his company, claiming that Wenner wanted to replace 44-year-old Caruso with someone younger. |
February 28, 2006 The New Republic names Franklin Foer, author of “How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization” and a senior editor at the magazine since 2000, to its top editorial position.
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March 1, 2006 The Atlantic Monthly names New York Times reporter James Bennet as its new editor. The position had been vacant since Michael Kelly resigned to write a book in 2002 and subsequently was killed while on assignment in Iraq. |
March 20, 2006 Cullen Murphy, former managing editor of The Atlantic Monthly and William Langewiesche, The Atlantic’s star reporter, surprise not a few people by joining glossier Vanity Fair. |
March 23, 2006 The Economist names John Micklethwait editor-in-chief, replacing Bill Emmott, who retired from the post after 13 years. In selecting the 43-year-old Englishman, the magazine stuck to its national origins despite a growing presence in the U.S. |
April 4, 2006 The newly-launched magazine Atlanta Peach may have wanted to draw attention to itself when it put Pamela Anderson on the cover of its premiere issue, but it’s unlikely this was the kind of attention it was after: at the magazine’s launch party the buxom blonde, allegedly a couple glasses of bubbly to the wind, took the stage and berated the publishers for not having paid her yet and urged attendees to steer clear of KFC, which she claims kills its chickens in a cruel manner. The jury’s still out on whether she was serious—or just showing off a subtle sense of humor.
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