Donald Trump And His Magazine Will Outlive The Roaches
Donald Trump, that arbiter of good taste and sound judgment, is reviving his twice-failed namesake magazine in November with the help of upscale publishing house Ocean Drive Media Group. The last iteration of the magazine, Trump World, dispensed with staff payroll for the last two months of a brief, debt-filled existence under publisher Michael Jacobson and Premiere Publishing Group. "It's the third relaunch of a brand that dozens of advertisers won't go near, on a publication schedule that guarantees nothing can be timely or more than marginally detailed, being done for a man with no compunctions about screwing his licensees into the ground," a (totally disgruntled, for obvious reasons) former staffer told us.
"There's no doubt about it that the previous publisher, Michael Jacobson, was an idiot, both in terms of his editorial goals (he's completely tacky, of the cigars-boxing-Vegas-dating strippers variety) and the licensing deal he agreed to with Donald Trump, which cost so much money per issue that it basically guaranteed our ad base could never more than make us break even. Ocean Drive has a lot more overhead than we did, and is definitely a better choice for this than a small custom publisher, but why ANYONE would get involved with this magazine at this stage of the game is totally beyond me."
This time around, Trump magazine will aim to teach its readers how to spend ridiculous sums of money, presumably in the manner of The Donald himself, who owed creditors billions of dollars in the early 90s.
Of course, he won't be joining them at the brink of financial ruin this time: "I put up no money," Trump told the Times today.