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April 02, 2006
Missing Cargo
Cargo, the magazine that has outfitted me for the last year, announced its closure recently. Here's the NYTimes's take:
THE lesson to be learned from the death of Cargo is not that guys don't like to shop, spend money or moisturize; or that Cargo was too gay or too straight; or that the cultural phenomenon of the metrosexual never really existed. The real culprit behind the decision last week to close Cargo, the men's shopping magazine, would have to be the stickers.Men don't like stickers. In each issue for two years Cargo included a page of peel-off tabs marked Buy or Save, so readers could neatly note their potential purchases while thumbing through features on cellphones, flat-screen televisions and dark-wash jeans.
Across the publishing landscape, as pundits search for a deep meaning behind the abrupt end of a magazine that was held up as symbolic of shifts in consumerism, sexual identity and the deterioration of journalism, maybe they need look no further than the stickers.
"I love shopping," said Bart Ianantuoni, a Manhattan personnel executive who gave up on Cargo after reading a few issues because he was offended by the presentation. "Stickers? They're treating men like teenage girls. I'm a guy. If I want something in a magazine and think I can't remember it, I'm going to tear the page out."
At last count Cargo had 373,727 subscribers, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, which does not break down numbers on how many are metrosexuals.
It was refreshing to have a men's magazine that wasn't cut from the Playboy mold. Don't get me wrong; Hugh Hefner is a god. However, I don't want to read articles of any length, and I can find pictures of naked women anywhere without paying for it.
Read the whole thing from the NYT.
Posted by adrianjo at April 2, 2006 10:55 PM