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We received an interesting email late yesterday afternoon from the good folks at Radar. Seems they're not pleased with our reports that the magazine, contrary to Maer Roshan's claims, is actually not sold out.

While we've long abandoned any hope of accurate coverage from Gawker, the flawed assumptions behind your recent posts on Radar call for a response. As a virtual publication, you seem to be unfamiliar with the standard practices and terminology of the magazine industry, so here's a brief tutorial.

We get schooled by consumer marketing SVP Susan Blattman after the jump. But we also wonder if perhaps her education initiative should begin at home.

The complete letter:

While we've long abandoned any hope of accurate coverage from Gawker, the flawed assumptions behind your recent posts on Radar call for a response. As a virtual publication, you seem to be unfamiliar with the standard practices and terminology of the magazine industry, so here's a brief tutorial.

Radar, like all magazines, is allocated to newsstands based on their expectations of demand. Generally, retailers order more copies than they end up selling, so reorders of a particular issue are relatively rare. In Radar's case, however, demand for our debut issue quickly exceeded our initial newsstand supply. As Gawker itself pointed out, many retailers sold out of the issue a week after it appeared, requiring us to distribute thousands of extra copies to meet demand.

Many newsstands across the country have reordered the magazine two, three, and even four times, which explains why you can still find Radar in locales that initially sold out. The Time Warner Center Borders cited in one of your posts, for example, tore through its initial allocation of 40 issues in its first week, and went on to reorder 89 more copies, and is currently at a 73% sell-through. The Universal News you mention also sold out early on, and was so eager for more issues that we sent them over by messenger instead of by mail. At a time when sales of magazines in general are dipping, our performance is a hopeful sign, and one that we're proud of. Judging from the prominent placement the magazine continues to receive in many of your photos, sales are still going strong two months after the issue first appeared. Of course, we'd have to give Gawker a little credit for that.

Sincerely,
Susan Blattman
Senior Vice President, Consumer Marketing
Radar

We genuinely appreciate Blattman's lesson on magazine distribution. She makes some very good points. (And we won't bother pointing out that they're somewhat irrelevant, as Maer didn't tell WWD, "We sold out at some newsstands in New York." He said, "We're sold out all over the country." The "we're" — we are, uncontracted — suggests an ongoing state of affairs, not a question of restocking.)

But here's a thought for her: She should give this same lesson to Radar's PR guy, Drew Kerr, who made a totally different defensive argument on his theoretically anonymous blog. When he starts criticizing us for not knowing what we're talking about, it'd be nice if he knew what he was talking about.

Gawker Knows Zero About Magazines [Plastic Moon Rain]
Whois Results for plasticmoonrain.com [Register.com]

Earlier:
 The Greatest American Magazine Launch: 'Radar' Sells Out?
The Greatest American Magazine Launch: Spot That 'Radar'!
The Greatest American Magazine Launch: Tampa Checks In