Death and Resurrection for Spy Magazine

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May 13, 1994|PAUL D. COLFORD | SPECIAL TO THE TIMES; Paul D. Colford is a columnist for Newsday. His column is published Fridays

As chronicled at length in Inside Media, a biweekly trade publication, the last days of Spy were marked by nasty feuding among the staffers--the kind of meltdown the magazine used to gleefully discover in somebody else's back yard.

"One of the plans had been to plant cocaine in my desk and then call the police," said a bitter Tony Hendra in the article. He was the editor in February when owner Jean Pigozzi finally cut off financial life support and closed the unprofitable, but rarely dull, satirical monthly.
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Comes the spring and Spy is being resurrected by new management. Sussex Publishers Inc. confirmed Monday that it had purchased Spy--presumably the name and the valuable subscription list--and on Wednesday, the Manhattan-based company announced that the magazine would reappear with a July / August issue.

Sussex is not new to revivals. It stepped in and bought two other once-struggling magazines, Psychology Today and Mother Earth News, from Owen Lipstein, now the company's editorial director, and made them work.

According to the announcement, Lipstein will become editorial director of Spy, Jim Mauro will serve as editor, and the relaunched mag will include contributions from writers Jamie Malanowski, Mark O'Donnell and other alumni.