Some time ago I used to avidly read Spy Magazine. Being in Australia, I always received issues at least a couple of months late, but the sight of a new issue on the newstands was guaranteed to make my day.
Then suddenly, the issues dried up.
My question - what happened to Spy magazine? Did it just fold through lack of circulation, or was there more to it?
Thanks
MRR
Man, I loved SPY Magazine! Best issue was the one they did on why OJ could not have been framed. What was it, 1001 reasons? Anyway, I think it fell by the wayside due to low subscription numbers.
Here’s the Wikipedia entry:
The magazine got crappy and people stopped buying it. Nothing mysterious there.
It was an 80s thing that outlived its usefulness. After 1988 or so, nobody really noticed it. Just like a decade before nobody noticed national lampoon.
I actually subscribed to it when it disappeared. My remaining subscription was filled by some horrible rag that seemed to be the poor mans version of Maxim.
I think it was the combination of irreverence and investigative journalism that did them in. Probably got to the point where advertisers began shying away (anyone remember the full-page news photo featuring the decapitated head?)
The handwriting probably was on the wall when it became clear that a Spy exposé, however newsworthy, never got picked up by the media at large. It was as if they’d been blackballed.
I got something called “P.O.V.” and then (IIRC) a “relaunched” version of “Egg”. Ick.
The only (good) memory from either of those was that one had a story about crab fishering in Alaska that was “ohmygosh”. Which immediately (!) spawned a Discovery Channel show about it.
Basically, Spy went after the Bushies with great zeal. Which meant that the mainstream “liberal” media avoided reporting on its story completely. They also went after Democrats too, so that market was lost.
It was also too insular. Lot’s of coverage of NYC folk that no one else ever heard of.
Once the income dried up, then it went downhill fast. Followed by a quite prolonged (series of) death(s).
I remember how insular it was. All of the articles were about people either in New York or LA. I have no idea what appeal it had to people elsewhere. But I doubt that the investigative journalism killed it, since they were doing that from the beginning. I remember the piece on George W. Bush’s supposed mistress, and one on Wackenhut. And there was the article about Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Thanks for the Wikipedia reference, by the way. I didn’t know they’re publishing a book, but I’ll have to get it. (I threw out all of my old issues when I moved about ten years ago.)
I was a longtime subscriber, and I don’t think that their reporting or subject matter had anything to do with the demise of Spy. The last couple of years, the quality went way downhill, and they became a parody of their former glory. I wish I had hung on to the early issues.
I subscribed to Spy for several years in the early 1990s. Insular indeed. For several issues, way too many, they had a column on going on behind the scenes at The New York Times. Not major exposés, just trivial employee griping and sniping. Who the hell cared?
Dewey Finn writes:
> I remember the piece on George W. Bush’s supposed mistress, and one on
> Wackenhut.
Surely the article, if it was on any Bush, was on George H. W. Bush, since Spy folded before George Bush entered office.
Excuse me, I meant to say “before George W. Bush entered office.”
You’re right.
I subscribed in 1987 after I found the classic “Yuppie Porn” issue on the newsstand. But while they did good things after that, they never reached that peak again. It was in serious decline by the time it was sold in 1991, and without Kurt Anderson there was no hope that it could keep going. Tony Hendra helped kill the National Lampoon when he became editor, so hiring him to replace Anderson was deliberate suicide.
I agree that the magazine was too insular, too focused on the New York/L.A. set. The few good political articles didn’t outweigh the tons of insider fluff. Any of the classic bits, like Separated at Birth, came early on and the new editors could find nothing comparable to keep interest high. The conspiracy theory of ftg is, as always, drowned by mundane reality. Advertisers may have cared about slander, but the Powers That Be took no notice because Spy was just an ant underneath their feet.
That was a great magazine in its prime. Come to think of it, when I met the woman who is now my ex-wife, that was one of the first things we bonded over.
The first eight or so years with her were great, just like Spy!
Heh. You mean the one with the caption that went something like, “A Sri Lankan police officer apprehends the prime suspect in a recent bicycle bombing”?
Grisly. But damned cool.
I’d always assumed that it was indicted on some sort of espionage charges.
I loved Spy. Their stuff on Scientology was cool, and they also did a great hatchet job on Steven Seagal. Joe Conason’s investigative stuff was really good.
The one about George H.W. Bush’s mistress was actually part of a piece entitled “1001 Reasons Not to Vote for George Bush.” Reason #1 was “He cheats on his wife.”
I don’t quite understand the accusations of insularity. Well, i sort of understand them, but don’t think it detracted from the magazine. Back when i was reading Spy, i was living in Canada and Australia and had never been to New York or Los Angeles, but i still found the magazine interesting because it was clever and seemed to be written by smart, irreverent people.
The Schwarzeneger article stuck with me. The story about treating the PA on T2 like a literal dog was distrubing as well as imaging Arnold looking up from some random vagina and saying “Eatings not cheating”.