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Wenner Media to Sell Men’s Journal, Continuing Shift From Print
First, Wenner Media sold nearly half of its ownership of Rolling Stone. Then it sold its celebrity magazine Us Weekly. And now, on the eve of Rolling Stone’s 50th anniversary, Wenner is selling another title, Men’s Journal.
American Media Inc., which publishes The National Enquirer and agreed to buy Us Weekly from Wenner in March, planned to announce on Thursday that it would also buy Men’s Journal, a men’s lifestyle magazine, from Wenner. Both Wenner and American Media declined to disclose the terms of the deal.
“We weren’t proactively on the market with Men’s Journal, but the opportunity came up, and it kind of fits in with our plans and our desire to really continue to grow Rolling Stone,” Gus Wenner, the head of digital operations at Wenner and the son of the company’s founder, Jann S. Wenner, said in an interview on Wednesday. “It just made sense.”
The magazine will join American Media’s collection of men’s and fitness brands. It already owns Men’s Fitness, Muscle & Fitness, Flex, and Muscle & Fitness Hers. David J. Pecker, the chief executive of American Media, said in an interview that adding Men’s Journal would give the publisher an opportunity to attract more premium advertisers, both in print and online.
“I don’t have these types of advertisers,” he said. “That’s really what I was looking at here.”
American Media retained only about half of Us Weekly’s staff of about 120 after it acquired the magazine, but Mr. Pecker said he intended to keep all of the roughly 25 Men’s Journal employees. In the future, however, some of the men’s titles could be consolidated, he said.
Also on Wednesday, the magazine publisher Rodale said it was exploring “strategic alternatives” that could include a sale of its male-targeted magazine, Men’s Health. Mr. Pecker said he intended to pursue that magazine “very aggressively.”
Once a magazine publishing giant with multiple periodicals, Wenner has shrunk significantly over the last year. In September, it sold 49 percent of Rolling Stone to BandLab Technologies, a Singapore-based music technology company led by Meng Ru Kuok, the son of an Asian business magnate. It then sold Us Weekly for a reported $100 million.
Without Men’s Journal and Us Weekly, Wenner’s portfolio would include just 51 percent of Rolling Stone and Glixel, a gaming website that the company introduced last year.
The sale of Men’s Journal would further shift Wenner’s business away from print. It would also be sure to ignite speculation about Jann Wenner, who has been slowly ceding control of the company to his son.
Gus Wenner declined to discuss the company’s leadership plans.
Men’s Journal, which was introduced in 1992, brought in only a small percentage of Wenner’s revenue, and its proposed sale does not come as a surprise. Still, the deal would most likely prompt renewed nostalgia for a once-powerful industry that has crumpled as circulation and print advertising revenue have declined. But unique financial challenges also hurt Wenner, including a 2006 deal to buy back a stake in Us Weekly — previously sold to the Walt Disney Company in 2001 — which burdened the publisher with significant debt.
In 2014, Rolling Stone published a later-debunked article on an alleged gang rape at the University of Virginia that led to three lawsuits against the magazine. It has settled two of them, one last week for $1.65 million and the other in April for an undisclosed amount. The third was dismissed by a judge last June.
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