Add the “Crystal Ball of Pop Culture” to the annals of glossies gone under.
Interview, the monthly magazine co-founded by Andy Warhol and John Wilcock and known for its in-depth and free-wheeling conversations with (and often by) celebrities, is shutting down after 49 years, several staffers said on Monday.
“After 10 months at my dream job at @InterviewMag, today is sadly my last day as the magazine has closed,” wrote senior online editor Trey Taylor on Twitter. Subsequent tweets from colleagues on Interview‘s masthead appeared to confirm the news.
Purchased by billionaire art collector and publisher Peter Brant in 1989, the magazine had languished over the better part of the last decade, undergoing a series of redesigns, relaunches, and changes both at the top of the masthead and among its executive ranks. Interview raised eyebrows in 2016 when it brought in Jason Nikic, associate publisher of Hearst’s Car and Driver, to help grow the magazine’s digital business, but financial circumstances appeared to be growing increasingly fraught in recent months.
Parent company Brant Publications was allegedly kicked out of its Soho offices in February after failing to make rent. That development preceded the April departure of longtime editorial director Fabien Baron, who then reportedly sued the magazine $600,000 in unpaid wages. A similar lawsuit was filed by former president Dan Ragone in 2016.
This is a developing story.
After 10 months at my dream job at @InterviewMag, today is sadly my last day as the magazine has closed.
My personal email is iamtreytaylor@gmail.com if you hear of anything going. So much love to my amazing coworkers @ezra_marc @Jane_Gayduk @austentosone. pic.twitter.com/ILJOvPWpD4
— trey taylor (@treytylor) May 21, 2018
#R.I.P. Interview magazine. I’m really depressed about this.
— Andy Cohen (@Andy) May 21, 2018
interview magazine has folded … media rocks!! hit my line for freelance etc ezramarcus2@gmail.com
— Ezra Marcus (@ezra_marc) May 21, 2018
