Talk Magazine finished.

January 18, 2002 3:20 PM

Talk Magazine finished. After months of speculation the Miramax-affiliated magazine, run by Tina Brown (former editor of the New Yorker), has finally been axed. Talk joins Mirabella, Brill's Content, and many other big-budget mags to have been killed in the last year. If even a magazine backed by a movie house can't pay its bills, who's next?
posted by arielmeadow (23 comments total)

Sh*t, I just ordered a gift subscription for my wife earlier this week. I wish I had chosen the 'bill me later' option rather than credit card. Doesn't seem like the order's been posted to my card yet, at least.

Anyway, my wife and I were looking forward to the magazine. It reminds me of "George", JFK jr's old mag.

Of course, this is just Drudge...I'll believe it more when I see it somewhere else.
posted by msacheson at 3:47 PM on January 18, 2002

who actually read this magazine? maybe they ran out of miramax darlings to parade on the cover....gwyneth and ben, i'm looking at you!
posted by deftone at 3:48 PM on January 18, 2002

I got Talk "free" in exchange for a few frequent flyer miles that would've expired soon anyway... It was basically softcore pornography, in my opinion, and I include the "news/talk" and photos under that heading. Boo hoo. Who would've thought that the true passion of Tina Brown, who presided over a more serious and interesting New Yorker than most people gave her credit for, was to produce such superficial crap?

Here's the Reuters story on this (NYT link).
posted by Zurishaddai at 4:04 PM on January 18, 2002

I don't have the hard figures, but I'm positive that the magazine-per-capita count went way, way up over the past 15 years or so -- to the point where there are just too damn many magazines out there. In other words, we may be in for a correction.

Assuming I'm correct that there has been an overprofusion of magazines, does anyone know why?
posted by argybarg at 4:18 PM on January 18, 2002

I got it for frequent flyer miles too.....at least I got a few issues out of it. I did notice the last issue was a lot thinner....not nearly as many ads I think.

Who has time to read anymore anyway-we are all on the internet now......
posted by bunnyfire at 4:36 PM on January 18, 2002

Yeah, msacheson, sorry for the Drudge link. I was given the Talk news by an inside source, and then went hunting for a link. Glad Reuters could back the story up.
posted by arielmeadow at 4:36 PM on January 18, 2002

Good riddens. Prentious corporate rag launched by woman who, managed to, retrospectively, taint The New Yorker.
posted by ParisParamus at 4:46 PM on January 18, 2002

I don't know that this is Tina Brown's fault specifically. Ad pages are way down, not just in the tech sector, as a result of the recession. There are a lot of marginally-profitable (or marginally unprofitable!) magazines that are going to be seen as no longer worth it.

And the New Yorker was on its own way out before she got hold of it. Temporary Vanity-Fair-ization aside, now they're plugged back into the culture they write about, which is good. For a magazine of its stature, the worst sin was irrelevance.
posted by dhartung at 4:50 PM on January 18, 2002

I think Congress should pass an ordinance stating that the only magazines that are allowed circulation in the U.S. are The New Yorker, Scientific American, Playboy, and National Geographic.
posted by noisemartyr at 5:17 PM on January 18, 2002

Judge a magazine by the quality of it's Illustrator's, crappy illustration=bad magazine.
posted by bittennails at 7:37 PM on January 18, 2002

I never understood what the hell Talk was all about. Political thought, culture news, celebrity gab? If you're not Time or Newsweek, I think your magazine has to be a little more focused nowadays.
posted by owillis at 8:08 PM on January 18, 2002

In my opinion, magazines are not doing well due to the internet. I no longer have a need to buy a newspaper or magazine anymore....I use the internet to get all the information I need.
posted by Sonserae at 8:30 PM on January 18, 2002

People for the pretentious.
posted by Zurishaddai at 9:58 PM on January 18, 2002

Say, is "Jane" still published?
posted by Erendadus at 10:12 PM on January 18, 2002

Yes, Jane is alive and well.

At least, I hope.
posted by brittney at 10:32 PM on January 18, 2002

What are riddens?
posted by yerfatma at 10:57 PM on January 18, 2002

Jane should die. Bust does it so much better.
posted by arielmeadow at 2:05 AM on January 19, 2002

I no longer have a need to buy a newspaper or magazine anymore....
Magazines are still great. You use them differently than the internet, that's all. You read them at a different pace, you shift back and forth between ads and articles, you pause in your reading and think or daydream or remember something totally unrelated. There's room for both the internet and magazines in the reading world. What Tina Brown learned, was that the market for magazines about the same scum-of-the-earth actors, actresses, criminals and politicians that Vanity Fair, George, the New Yorker, Harpers, Salon and every other interchangeable magazine was glorifying was saturated. My two cents is, that far from wanted revelence, readers may be looking for a degree of distance from the the big mass of pop glop that crosses all media today, and would like a little disconnected, irrrelevence to give them some perspective. How about a six-part series on grain, or the elements, or a long John McPhee piece on constructing something out of birch bark?
posted by Faze at 6:43 AM on January 19, 2002

Faze: Harper's glorifies celebrities? Heh. Since when, exactly?
posted by raysmj at 9:16 AM on January 19, 2002

Raysmj: Yeah, I guess Harper's doesn't really belong on that list, but I think my subconscious free associated it there because it seems to arise from the same intellectual mire as those other magazines. Actually, Harpers needs to be taken to task for its tired formula, predictable politics, and absolutely threadbare Harpers' Index. Man, put that thing to sleep!
posted by Faze at 9:37 AM on January 19, 2002

Faze - yeah, Harper's is often a big crock of pseudo-intellectual shit, but they have David Foster Wallace on board so they can't be all bad.
posted by jonmc at 3:21 PM on January 19, 2002

Yeah, I agree, who cares! It always seemed like more of an entertainment product, a marketing synergy between powerful media people than a real magazine.
posted by braun_richard at 5:40 PM on January 19, 2002

My post wasn't out of concern for whether Talk was any good (I think you've got it right, braun_richard), but more just to note the fall of another magazine with more funding than inspiration.
posted by arielmeadow at 7:47 PM on January 19, 2002