Israeli journalist Lisa Goldman reproduces an interesting story regarding the friendship recently established between the respective editors of Time Out Beirut and Time Out Tel Aviv. Though TOB has ceased publication for obvious reasons, TOTA ran a July 20 cover (shortly after the more overt hostilities commenced) that's a variation-homage on the classic "View of New York from Ninth Avenue" cover from the New Yorker. Of course, the view across the river on the TOTA cover is a bit less sanguine than that which inspired it. Full image after the jump. (Bonus: Compare, contrast, and discuss Time Out New York's cover, "The War for Brooklyn.")

So remember how Hachette Filipacchi published the first issue of Shock magazine with that cover photo of the U.S. soldier in Iraq holding a bloodied baby? And remember how the guy who shot the photo, Michael Yon, flipped out, arguing that he never sold the rights to the image? And remember how it turned out that Hachette thought it had done the right thing and purchased rights from a photo agency, but that the agency never really had the rights to sell in the first place? And remember how all parties tried to reach a settlement, and thought they did, but then Yon backed out at the last minute? And you know how that's where things have been stuck for a few weeks now? Yeah? Well, that's where it still stands. Hachette put out a press release last night just to make sure you know that.

Newsweek's cover this week is its first-ever "Giving Back Awards," a sort of honor of 15 people who "devote themselves to helping others." Naturally at least one or two members of such a list must have Katrina connections. One Katrina-connected award winner, as you might expect, was a certain CNN anchor who channeled the publics' anger at government officials and was ultimately transformed by the experience. By which we mean Soledad O'Brien, of course.

The new New York, weighing in at 168 pages, arrived this week with an almost Vanity Fair-like heft. We were planning to congratulate the mag on this achievement — actually, we were waiting for the inevitable press release touting the accomplishment — but then we actually gave the cover a look. And we're not sure we'll ever be able to quite get past the Platon-shooting-Clinton-for-Esquire shot of Woody Allen's crotch we'll have to spend the next two weeks looking at. (It's a double issue.) Yuck.

Time, today, and Newsweek, March 6. Click to enlarge.

Our boss as just sent us the cover image for the July 2006 Out, the first from new editor Aaron Hicklin, the BlackBook vet. We can't say we find it particularly interesting or exciting, but bossman is buds with Hicklin and so we figured we might as well throw him a bone. And, actually, we ought to give Hicklin some credit. It's nice to see Out's cover-model tradition — a straight actor who happens to be playing a gay (in this case, bi) role — has remained intact. Excellent work.

We were pleased over the weekend to notice at our local magazine stand the first issue of Martha Stewart's new Blueprint magazine. And we would have been even more pleased if she'd been able to hire some premier copy editors for her premiere issue.

Above left, this week's U.S. News. Above right, the Aug. 9, 2004, Newsweek. Apparently Mort Zuckerman's cutbacks now extend to cover ideas.

And for some reason we'd always assumed he'd have an impressive package. Must be the 'roids.

FishbowlNY scores a small scoop today with Jared Paul Stern's "book cover concept," as designed by famous book designer Chip Kidd:

Well hung, eh? Hmm...

Between the new issue of Rolling Stone and the new issue of The Nation, cartoonist Robert Grossman is clearly, as the Observer notes, having his best week ever. At least until Jann Wenner and Katrina vanden Heuvel notice he sold basically the same image to two mags at the same time, and vow never to work with him again.

This week, Jann Wenner's Us Weekly features a cover story advertising an article in Wenner's Rolling Stone. Next week, we fully expect Us will have a cover advertising Wenner's Men's Journal.

[Click to enlarge.]

Never mind the not- actually-visible-from-space enormous Maxim cover that may or may not be in Las Vegas desert. An intrepid Maxim reader (looker? scanner? admirer? lecher?) has picked up the actual issue and noticed something interesting about the big gatefold feature:

Maxim has reached its 100th issue. To mark that achievement, the ur-lad mag has created an enormous version of its milestone cover, featuring Housewife Eva Longoria, and splayed it across the desert outside Las Vegas. The ginormous cover is 75 feet wide by 110 feet long, and the press release brags that it's visible from space. (Certainly it's visible from Google Earth — image at right — but then so is our apartment building.) We don't know if that claim is true, but, if it is, we really hope no Martians are looking right now. If they are, God, we're so embarrassed.

We pulled The New Yorker out of our mailbox when we got home Monday night — OK, fine, when we put on pants and waddled downstairs in the middle of the afternoon — and we glanced at the cover, which we found to be moderately cute and perhaps even a touch amusing. We clearly didn't look at it carefully enough. A writerly pal alerted us to a secret warning buried in the image:

• Plan to sex up National Magazine Awards event includes performance by Wynton Marsalis, an award presentation by Anderson Cooper, and maybe — if we're really lucky — an award presentation by Heidi Klum. And for the big finish, ASME president Mark Whitaker, Newsweek's editor, will join Time's Jim Kelly for a choreographed performance of Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better. [NYP]
• Rolling Stone reality show moving along nicely and set to start taping in July. But there's bad news, too: "[C]ast members will be selected based largely on merit as opposed to, say, sex appeal and a penchant for sociopathic behavior," which sounds no fun at all. [WWD]
• Times reporters continue to write books, continue to be confused — to the union's chagrin — about the rules under which they are or are not allowed to write them. [NYO]
• Jessica Simpson, Ashlee Simpson, Britney Spears, and Tom Cruise moved the most mags in 2005. [MIN]
• Time Inc. reaches $4.5M settlement in subscription-renewal investigation. Now if they'd just do something about those fucking subscription-renewal cards. [Reuters]

At right is the cover of last week's Newsweek. And here is the correction from this week's Newsweek:

The latest edition of The Queens Courier — the borough's weekly community newspaper — reminds us again why we're very pleased to live in Manhattan: The sex slaves here are much more attractive.