Thoughts on the Demise of Radar
I haven't written about Radar, the new magazine more read about than read, because its founding editor, Maer Roshan, is an acquaintance, and I didn't think the magazine was very good. But I also believe that new magazines take some time—and deserve some time—to find their voice. You really can't judge a magazine on three issues, particularly one that was operating under a short financial leash and with a constantly uncertain future.
Now Radar is, well, under the radar: financier Mort Zuckerman pulled the plug on a promised $12 million investment after just three issues. The magazine's abrupt end has prompted some unfortunate sniping, with the magazine's young staffers making unfortunate jokes about Zuckerman ("What's small and pulls out in a hurry?") and Zuckerman behaving more professionally, pointing out that the magazine was losing money hand over fist. An angry Roshan has publicly taken exception to Zuckerman's version of events, which strikes me as a mistake, because when something like this happens, you should always be thinking about your next employer, not your last one. To his credit, though, Maer was passionate about his magazine, and I'm sure this has been tough on him—you can't blame the guy for being upset.
I think there were a couple of forces in play here that haven't really been talked about.
The first is that Radar was the wrong magazine for the time we're living in. Its obsession with celebrity—not in an US magazine-like way, but filtered celebrity—felt very '90s to me, very
Talk. The covers were horrible: Paris Hilton, Tom Cruise, and...well, I don't think I even saw the third issue. It all felt vaguely warmed-over and unserious, falling into a gray area between escapist rubbish and a serious magazine. And, I think, Maer made the mistake of believing that what plays well with inside-the-media media—Page Six,
Gawker—mattered to anyone outside of a couple of Manhattan zip codes.
Second, the mainstream media right now is controlled by Baby Boomers, and they have been extremely reluctant to hand over the reins to the younger generation. (Is it X? Y? I can't remember.) That is, for example, the unwritten theme of Timothy O'Brien's interesting profile of Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner. By contrast, it's very hard to think of a national magazine edited by someone under 45. The New Republic, I suppose, and maybe Men's Health. (If that counts.) Instead, the younger people are making their inroads at new magazines or on the web—one reason why Radar's website was the only part of the magazine that seemed to be having any impact.
Radar represented a media youth movement of sorts, but I'm not sure that Maer was the best ambassador of his generation. I suspect the rap against him—that he focuses more on public relations than on editing—is probably right, and the business side of things never seemed to interest him much. Perhaps because Maer's search for funding was so well-publicized, there was about Radar always an air of children playing with their parents' money. Maybe ten years ago, that would have worked; people were throwing money around more carelessly then. But now, there just seemed something pathetic about it.
On the one hand, I'll miss Radar, because I believe in magazines and want there to be more of them. On the other hand, I wish there could be more magazines that make our culture more serious, and Radar was not one of them. Maybe, had it been given time, it would have been.
