ANIMAL Vindicated By Giant’s Now Official Death

Way back in May we mentioned that Giant was folding and gave at least two possible reasons why. One: it sucked. Two: its newly hired editor-in-chief, Smokey Fontaine, has a terrible history of killing magazines with boring content. Well, we were right! The mag has been deaded and this time they’re not even gonna try and deny it. Read their Sixth Sense-like revelation below acknowledging the inevitable: Read more »

‘Giant’ Folding?

A very reliable source in the magazine industry tells ANIMAL that Giant is folding after its July issue, citing abysmal ad sales. If true, this would be the second magazine that Smokey Fontaine* ruined—he was the Editor-in-Chief of America back when Dame Dash could still afford a Range Rover and helped drive that book into the ground too. This would also indicate that the attack letters allegedly sent out by rival rag XXL were either really effective or highly predictive. Either way, maybe that explains putting this funeral-home-ready shot of Nick Cannon mourning on the cover of what could be the last issue.

*Although Smokey is not the current Editor-in-Chief—he’s the Content Editor for its parent company Radio One—the dude was responsible for dramatically changing the face of the magazine (for the worse).

XXL Has A History of Trash Talking the Competition

Yesterday, we published a propagandist style dispatch that purported to show Hip Hop magazine XXL dishing scurrilous information—that probably wasn’t too far off the mark—about one of its competitors, Giant, to a major media planning agency. With brands spending decidedly less money and insertion orders becoming more and more scarce, we assumed this was just a new, albeit sleazy, strategy to secure ad dollars. But Harris Publications head honcho, Dennis Page, claims that the rumor mongering memo was not generated by anyone on his team, writing:
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XXL Warns Advertisers About the Fall of Giant

It’s no secret that marketing dollars have been drying up industry wide, but who knew that Hip Hop magazines like XXL were taking such drastic actions to retain and attract new advertisers, like this dire memo warning against spending money in a competitor book. This communique was sent to Mindshare, a media planning agency that controls a lot of money for big brands, and basically describes just how close to death Giant is. They claim that even the parent company, Radio One, has lost faith in the title, citing the lack of the mag’s inclusion in a recent trade advertisement that ran in Ad Age as the most damning evidence. Additionally, they mention the far more important indicators of its inevitable demise:

-Giant cut its newsstand distribution.

-The last two issues had less than twenty total ad pages.

But then things take a turn for the surreal.
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