A Mag Makes the Short List

Things must be really tough in the men’s magazine circulation business these days. Scantily clad females have been a perennial sales tool, starting with ancient Greek sculptors and moving down through even modern sports magazines. But today with advertising off and society more R-rated in general, the circulation-boosting ability of partially dressed starlets who profess a passion for snorkeling, for watching football while eating snack foods and for strong men who’ll never relinquish the TV remote is no guarantee anymore of moving expensive glossy men’s mags off the rack. There are only so many clothes one person can remove, no matter how desperately she seeks fame. So how can fully dressed magazine editors eager to keep their jobs boost single- copy sales and maybe reap some new subscribers?

Well, Americans love lists. They’re an evergreen attention-getter: 8 Creative Things to Do With Once-Hidden Easter Eggs. Any listing of the Top 10 Movies, 15 Handsomest Hunks, 15 Sexiest Women, 20 Best Retirement Communities, 30 Richest Americans, Top 40 Songs, 50 Most Powerful Hollywood Honchos, 60 Best Places to Live and 101 Ways to Drive Your Man Wild would make quite a list itself.

Such a list gives its creators a brief flash of self-serving national publicity, even if it’s the 10 Dirtiest Rivers or 12 Deadliest Intersections. The important thing in compiling such lists is ensuring that the criteria be sufficiently vague to prevent verification or credible dispute.

So for its April edition this one men’s magazine named the Greatest City on Earth. So far, so good, as long as the winner be in the North American circulation area, not be Keokuk and contain the young male demographics that advertisers desire. Which, surprise of surprises, is what happened.

Here’s the clever marketing twist that got the magazine’s editors maximum publicity: They named 13 different cities as THE Greatest City. They wrote totally fatuous articles about how great are New York and Detroit, Philadelphia and Toronto etc. as if each was the winner and shipped those versions to the respective cities. Then to ensure their promotional duplicity was discovered, they “mistakenly” shipped the New York copies to Philadelphia, which regards itself as a rival of the Big Apple. Surely, this is a finalist on any list of Shamelessly Cynical Journalism Ploys.

So to honor this achievement we’ve decided to pick that monthly men’s publication as the Worst Single Magazine of the Week. But because the magazine editors are no doubt really, really embarrassed by their Greatest City “mistake,” we’re not going to mention their publication’s name. It’s the least we can do for such an important contribution to American journalism. Oh, and the copies of this editorial in New York will say the same things as the copies in Los Angeles.