• WWD.com, Wednesday, March 29, 2006 10:47 AM

In an unsigned Memo Pad column at the usually insightful WWD.com, the question posed yesterday is one asked by many around the magazine world: Why did Condé Nast kill off Cargo without so much as handing it to a different editor, if only to see if the concept--a shopping magazine for men--had any merit?  Troubled, or even tired, magazines at major publishing companies ordinarily will be turned over to fresh editorial leadership. It happens at Condé Nast all the time.  But Ariel Foxman, who was Cargo's launch editor, was never replaced. He was with the book until the very end, which came this week.  "Although a Condé Nast spokeswoman said there had been no consideration given to replacing editor in chief Foxman, recent months have been filled with rumors of a quiet search under way," reports WWD. "The question of to what extent a different editor might have changed Cargo's fate will be asked long after the title's final installment... departs newsstands. Certainly Foxman was far from a safe bet; plucked from a senior editor position at In Style on the strength of a promising memo, he had never been an editor in chief before."  All true, and all the more reason, some think, that Condé Nast ought to have entrusted Cargo to a new editor, if only for several try-out issues.

Read the whole story at WWD.com »