Hearst Magazines

Marta Limbaugh says she wanted to create a magazine "that helps people find the mentor who will point them in the right direction." One of those who warmed to her idea for Vent Magazine was her husband, Rush Limbaugh. Vent, a quarterly whose spring premiere goes on sale next week, presents gripes and other observations previously posted by readers on the magazine's Web site (http://www.ventmag.com), along with features unique to the print edition. The cover story examines "Annoying People."

"His and Her Orgasms: How to Slow Him Down and Speed You Up." "Are You About to Be Dumped: 10 Hidden Signs He's Ready to Run." "Your New Man: How to Make the Sex So Good He'll Be Groveling." Cosmopolitan? You guessed it. There's a new editor in chief at Cosmo, but the popular young women's magazine, now edited by Bonnie Fuller, reads like a familiar, if slightly wilder version of the title led for so long by Helen Gurley Brown.

How does a newspaper or a magazine "scoop" itself? By putting a story online before it appears in the next printed issue. In recent weeks, the Dallas Morning News, Playboy and Time have chosen to break big stories on their World Wide Web sites to ensure the exclusivity of the pieces during the period before the next issues went to press.

When a New York publicist recently invited reporters to the breakfast launch of a new magazine, she noted in advance that the mystery start-up would not be aimed at children. After all, so many publications for kids--and parents--have been hatched during the past year that a new entry might have generated more of a "So what?" than a "Tell me more."

This was a year when many more players in the wide world of print came to share the vision of a so-called information superhighway, which someday may carry text and video traffic from home to home. More magazines and newspapers staked a place in this wired future by offering on-line extensions of their news-gathering operations. HarperCollins and other publishers launched interactive divisions to develop CD-ROMs and book spinoffs that need no stitched binding.

It doesn't get much better for an author and publisher than when Newsweek bases a cover story on their new book and Time gives it generous attention the same week. But considering Raymond E. Brown's weighty subject matter and hefty list price, it will take more than great publicity to spur impressive sales. It will take time and faith, both of which Doubleday professes to have in ample supply.

There are plenty of shopping days until Christmas--and HarperCollins is grateful for every one of them. Earlier this year, the publisher paid a reported $4.1 million for Jay Leno's "Leading With My Chin," a memoir of his childhood and nomadic years as a stand-up comic. But in the book's first 2 1/2 weeks in stores (through last Saturday), it has failed to generate a level of sales consistent with such a huge advance and the late-night ratings supremacy of Leno's "Tonight Show."

For a new magazine, the hard road to profitability is marked by dozens of sales pitches to seen-it-all advertisers and a constant striving for circulation gains. For the teams behind Saveur and Civilization, these start-up rigors should be eased now that the winning of National Magazine Awards has helped separate the publications from the pack.

Five years after the launch of Men's Journal, you need a magnifying glass to spot what may be the most significant change in a while. Jann S. Wenner, who founded and owns the sister publication to Rolling Stone, no longer lists himself at the top of the masthead as editor in chief. The lead spot belongs to the new editor, Terry McDonell, who rejoined his former associate last summer as the magazine was nearing profitability with a monthly circulation of 550,000.

A curvaceous Cindy Crawford graces the glossy cover, and the Cyrillic headline reads, "Sex or chocolate? A time for everything." Sixty thousand copies of the first Russian edition of Cosmopolitan magazine hit the streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg on Thursday.