Magazine

Now that Baltimore-based Monarch Services Inc. has shed its unprofitable envelope and printing business, company officials say they are moving forward with new plans for their sole remaining venture -- Girls' Life magazine.Formerly known as Monarch Avalon Inc., the company was founded in 1949 as a direct-mail printing facility but became best known as a maker of elaborate board games. But it has struggled financially in this decade, losing money in five of the past six years. Last year it sold its Avalon Hill games unit to Hasbro Inc. for $6 million in cash.

CREDIBILITY. Integrity. Those bulwarks of journalism are qualities that readers expect to define the Los Angeles Times. But some are questioning the newspaper's adherence to those values in light of disclosures that revenue from the Oct. 10 Los Angeles Times Magazine were shared with the new Staples Center arena, the sole subject of that issue.The profit-sharing arrangement, denounced by the newspaper's journalists as well as many readers, was not known to the magazines writers and editors who produced the issue, and they were the most profoundly distressed to learn of the deal.

Cole Porter's "Just One of Those Things" laments an affair that was "too hot not to cool down." These days, Talk magazine seems to be suffering the same problem.Last summer, Talk was white-hot news, from coverage of the magazine's launch party on New York's Liberty Island to the controversial cover story on Hillary Rodham Clinton. Talk was humming down the news pipeline even before the first issue had its premiere in August. Talk about Talk began in 1998, when editor in chief Tina Brown resigned from the New Yorker and announced plans to create a new publishing venture in partnership with Miramax.

NEW YORK -- This balding man sitting here in his French cuffs, yellow necktie and suspenders in an 11th-floor office amid a drift of papers, Fed-Ex boxes, unread manuscripts spilling from the IN box, this would be the low-energy version of Steven Brill. Bushed but certainly not beaten, Brill sits in a clutter between appointments, between appearances on MSNBC and Charlie Rose, apparently weary from his plunge into a vast media hall of mirrors: the media critic criticized by the media to such an extent as to become a media phenom himself.

NEW YORK -- Until today, none of Newsweek's reporting on the Clinton matter had appeared in Newsweek magazine.But no one would know that from the way the Clinton scandal has been covered over the past week. Although Newsweek decided at the last minute, on Saturday, Jan. 17, not to go with its scoop on the accusations that are now common knowledge, the magazine has since been cited by just about every news organization for its accounts about Monica Lewinsky, Linda R. Tripp and Vernon E. Jordan Jr. Newsweek has been credited for every reprint of tape transcripts, and staff members have appeared on several news programs.

I AM A WOMAN of a certain age - past the halfway point in life-expectancy for my gender - and I must confess I have not considered this anything to celebrate, but rather something to be endured.I have marked each physical deterioration, each new imperfection, with grudging resignation while still gazing at the display windows at the Gap and the Limited, Banana Republic and even Ann Taylor, and imagining that those rib-sucking fashions might look good on me.Who am I kidding? I am not Ally McBeal.

Tomorrow, teens will be introduced to a magazine with the ability to balance acne, AIDS and Alicia Silverstone.Teen People is brought to the 13- to 21-year-old set by Time Inc., the power behind the 38 million-circulation People magazine. With a circulation of at least 500,000 and a newsstand price of $2.99, Teen People will produce 10 issues a year.Four million teens already read People, according to Christina Ferrari, Teen People's managing editor. Teen People is done in the People style, even featuring demographically correct versions of signature People sections such as "Star Tracks" and "Chatter."

NEW YORK -- Tina Brown, the Oxford-educated and Fleet Street-trained magazine editor who for better or worse pulled the New Yorker into the late-20th century, announced yesterday that she will resign as editor to start a company affiliated with Miramax Films that will publish a new monthly magazine, publish books and produce films and television programming.Brown's announcement came after months of rumors of growing tension between her and Conde Nast Publications, which owns the New Yorker, over the company's attempts to make the magazine less unprofitable.

While the public focuses on the expected battle among Duke, North Carolina, Kansas and Arizona for the men's college basketball crown this month, media observers will be watching the war between the magazines that will cover the tournament.With the heavily promoted and much ballyhooed premiere of the biweekly ESPN Magazine on tap for next week, Sports Illustrated and The Sporting News aren't exactly waiting patiently for the ESPN juggernaut to overwhelm them.In the last few months, TSN and SI, both weeklies, have undergone changes, some subtle and some drastic, in anticipation of what ESPN is expected to offer.

WASHINGTON -- If all goes according to plan today, Sean McDonough and Bill Raftery will sound as if they know every single detail about all 100 or so of the players on the eight teams assigned to the East subregional of the NCAA tournament.If that happens, it will be because they've been cramming for the four games to be played at the MCI Center like a failing student before a critical exam.Since the 64-team tournament draw was announced Sunday night, McDonough and Raftery have immersed themselves in as many details about Connecticut, South Carolina, Xavier, Indiana, Oklahoma, Washington, Richmond and Fairleigh Dickinson as can possibly be digested in 72 hours.

Spencer Livingston Davidson III, a former Evening Sun reporter who later became an associate editor at Time magazine, died Wednesday of heart failure at St. Francis Hospital in Roslyn, N.Y. He was 85. Mr. Davidson, the son of a newspaperman, was born in Baltimore and raised on 31st Street. His father, who died in 1929, was an assistant managing editor of The Sun. After graduating from McDonogh School in 1942, he served with an Army artillery unit during the Battle of the Bulge and was later a military policeman in Berlin.

Beginning today, Charm City's interior-design fans have a magazine to call their own. Paper Doll House, a free publication from the same publishers who have been putting out the fashion magazine Paper Doll since 2006, will be available at some 100 merchants and newsstands throughout the city and surrounding area. From its front cover, featuring Baltimore-born furniture designer Laura Yaggy, to its back cover, an ad for high-end designer jewelry, Paper Doll House is aimed at readers with high incomes and discriminating tastes.

Like many teenage girls, Lexy Rogers has dreams of becoming a model. That's why she and hundreds of other teenage runway hopefuls gathered yesterday at The Mall in Columbia for a chance to be featured in a Seventeen magazine photo shoot. The magazine's "Rock the Runway" tour is stopping at malls in four cities around the country this month in search of models age 13 to 21 to appear on the magazine's Web site, seventeen.com. The girls filled out applications, then had a professional photographer take a head shot.

Three generations of the Powell family took advantage of the Presidents Day holiday to trace their genealogy, test their knowledge of black history and learn about their heritage. The family visited a traveling exhibit, sponsored by American Legacy: The Magazine of African-American History & Culture, that was parked in Baltimore for a second and final day yesterday. While their mother and aunt tracked ancestors through a computer database and their grandmother lingered over the exhibits, 12-year-old Jasmine Ashe and her brother Eric, 11, answered trivia questions.

Amid the urbane, sophisticated excess of magazines such as Elle Decor and Architectural Digest, it's refreshing to find a shelter magazine aimed at regular people. Small Room Decorating, published by Country Almanac, is for readers who don't live in 6,000-square-foot homes and don't have $15,000 to spend on an area rug. Although none of the photos in this magazine will wow you with its grandeur, apartment and bungalow dwellers will find plenty of ideas for ways to maximize their limited space.

CHICAGO -- For Todd Magazine, it's as if the Super Bowl, the World Series and the Olympics are rolled into one this winter. Magazine is head of Gatorade, and the sports-drink titan is in the thick of launching G2, its biggest new beverage in six years. A caffeinated version of Gatorade's Propel enhanced water also just hit the market, and in March the company plans to bring the ballyhooed Gatorade Tiger to store shelves. Golfing star Tiger Woods helped choose three new Gatorade flavors and will lend his name to the product, which was unveiled in October.

The latest edition of the student-produced Voices magazine contains an article on bullying and interviews with Judge Mablean Ephriam of the popular TV show Divorce Court, and rap artists such as Chris Brown, Big Daddy Kane and Doug E. Fresh. Impressive catches for a group of writers whose ages are almost all in the single digits. Most of Voices' contributors attend a before- and after-school program based at Wellwood International, an elementary school in Pikesville. "The goal is to get children's voices heard," said Darlene Walker, the Baltimore County parent who started the publication as a newsletter nearly 10 years ago. About 50 students contribute to Voices, Walker said.

HAPPY NEW YEAR! I guess we shouldn't make any predictions, because as George Eliot wrote, "Prophecy is the most gratuitous form of error." And, speaking of the future, the best quotes come from Forbes magazine this month. "The future? Like unwritten books and unborn children, you don't talk about it," said Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, while Eugene Kennedy reminded us that "We not only romanticize the future; we have also made it into a growth industry, a parlor game and a disaster movie all at the same time."

Will Sheila Dixon's service in Baltimore's highest office prove different than her male predecessors'? Some evidence of her femaleness comes tonight at the Inaugural Gala, in the newly sworn-in mayor's choice of the evening's mistress of ceremonies. No local television anchor or business mogul will announce the night's festivities; instead, Dixon has chosen as her emcee the head of one of the most popular fashion and beauty magazines in the country. Susan L. Taylor, editor-in-chief of Essence, the leading black women's lifestyle magazine, will add a fashionable flair to the ball's introductory duties.

When Baltimore businessman Edwin Avent purchased Heart & Soul magazine in bankruptcy court three years ago, he seemed to be the only one who had faith in the fitness publication aimed at African-American women. Earl Graves, the publisher of Black Enterprise magazine, was the winning bidder but then decided to pass on the deal, believing there wasn't a large enough audience for the publication to succeed. Investors that Avent approached declined to finance the first issue. And advertisers wanted to see that he could publish before they would commit.