New Direction for Details

If you can’t beat ‘em, hire ‘em.

Details, a fashion and entertainment magazine for young men that’s been hovering below 500,000 in circulation, has hired as its new editor in chief the editor of an increasingly more popular rival.

Mark Golin, 36, who has presided over Maxim’s swift rise in circulation to its present 650,000 and was part of a decision to guarantee advertisers a circulation of 950,000 later this year, was named to the Details position Monday by James Truman, editorial director of Conde Nast Publications Inc.

Golin will succeed Michael Caruso, who found himself in the awkward position last week of reading in the New York Post that Conde Nast Chairman S.I. Newhouse Jr. apparently was seeking outside advice about what to do with Details.

“We are grateful to Michael for his hard work and his contribution to the magazine,” Truman said in a prepared statement. In a separate statement, Truman praised Golin as “one of the cleverest and most creative young editors anywhere.”

Caruso, 37, had been editor in chief of Los Angeles magazine before joining Details in 1997. Launched in 1982 as a hip chronicle of downtown New York, Details was purchased in 1988 by Conde Nast and later transformed by Truman, then its editor in chief, into a lifestyle and fashion mag for young men. The monthly’s circulation of 476,000 is slightly higher than it was before Caruso took over.

Maxim was launched in 1997 as an American spinoff of the British Maxim. Both are owned by Dennis Publishing Inc. and feature alluringly clad young actresses as well as short pieces on sports, drinks and other guy stuff. A spokesman said that Maxim will name an acting editor at a later date.

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