• New York Times, Monday, January 23, 2012 4 PM

Veteran men's mag Esquire appears to be rebounding after a few bad years, writes David Carr. 

In 2009, "Beaten up by a crop of lad magazines like Maxim, then hammered by the flight of advertisers and readers to the Web, Esquire suffered a 24.3 percent loss in advertising pages compared with 2008." At least one forecast -- from  investor Web site 24/7 Wall Street -- had Esquire defunct in 2010.

Now, "Esquire is not dying — it is killing it," writes Carr. Signs of its rebound include a nice increase in ad pages in 2011 from 2010 -- 13.5% -- at a time when competitors were down; and a nice quote from David Carey, the chief of Hearst Magazines:“Relative to our other 20 businesses, Esquire was No. 1 in year-over-year performance."

Carr dissects the secrets of the mag's recovery (which editor in chief David Granger qualifies as "fragile") here. Among them, surprisingly: hanging on to most of its long-term editorial team.

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