Maer Roshan

Maer Roshan
Born United States

Maer Roshan is an American writer, editor, and entrepreneur who has launched and edited a series of groundbreaking magazines and websites, including the TheFix.com, NYQ, Punch!, Radar Magazine and Radaronline.com. He also served as the longtime Editor of New York, Editorial Director of Talk and Senior Editor of Interview. He has written for The New York Times, the Miami Herald, New York, The New Republic, The Advocate, Details and Harper's Bazaar. [1]

Early life

Born in Tehran, Iran, Roshan moved to New York in 1979, shortly after the Islamic Revolution and graduated from New York University . He began his media career in 1989 as a crime reporter at the Key West Citizen and launched his first magazine, the gay weekly QW in 1991, at the height of the AIDS crisis, recruiting a prominent group of writers and editors including Andrew Solomon and David Rakoff. The magazine's coverage of politics and culture earned it a General Excellence Award from the Alternative Press Association.[2] Soon after, Time Inc. hired him to create a national gay glossy, Tribe.[3]

Career

Hired as Deputy Editor of New York in 1994, Roshan produced some of the magazine's most high-profile features, including the first interview with Donatella Versace after the murder of her brother, Gianni Versace, and the first post-impeachment interview with Monica Lewinsky.[4] He was awarded an Emmy for his work as Executive Producer of the New York Awards, a televised special that aired on NBC.

In 2001, Tina Brown hired Roshan as the editorial director for Talk magazine. Following an editorial overhaul, he was credited by Adweek with "turning around the struggling publication, doubling circulation in ten months .[5] Brown called him "the only real natural male magazine editor of his generation."[6]

But the magazine's upwards trajectory was interrupted by the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which devastated the advertising market. In January 2002 Talk suspended publication. Roshan gathered aides from New York and Talk and started Radar in his living room. [7]

Roshan spent six months writing the business plan for the magazine and shopping it to prospective investors.[8] Roshan secured two million dollars from prominent investors including Harvey Weinstein and the attorney Benjamin Brafman, enough to publish two issues of the magazine. Started during the depths of a recession and run by a skeleton staff, Radar's launch generated outsized media coverage. The New York Times deemed it "the launch of the decade." BlackTable, an online magazine, published a feature that reviewed Radar's dozens of reviewers.

The magazine's two critically acclaimed test issues sold out across most of North America. But after the seed money was gone, Radar disappeared from the newsstands while Roshan searched for more long-term funding.[9] Fourteen months later he raised an estimated ten million dollars from businessmen Mort Zuckerman and Jeffrey Epstein, and secured further backing from Integrity Multimedia, a company funded by billionaire Ron Burkle. Under Roshan's leadership, Radar became one of the first print publications to include online media.[8] Roshan hired a staff devoted exclusively to producing web content. After attracting 1.5 million unique visitors in the month of its debut, Radaronline.com, was cited byThe Wall Street Journal as a new model for print magazines struggling to adapt to a new media environment.[10]

In May 2008, Radar was nominated for a General Excellence award by the American Society of Magazine Editors.[11] A few months later, Radaronline was purchased by American Media, the owner of the National Enquirer and Star for an undisclosed sum. The site currently attracts 100 million unique visitors a month.[12]

In April 2011 Roshan started TheFix.com, a daily website about the drug war, addiction, and recovery that was inspired by his own experience with addiction. The site is the most trafficked addiction and recovery portal in the world, featuring columns by Susan Cheeverand the first-ever independent reviews of treatment centers across the nation.

More recently, according to The New York Observer, Roshan teamed up with Dany Levy (founder of Dailycandy.com) and David Bennahum (founder of AmericanIndependent.com) to launch Punch! an interactive general interest iPad magazine that debuted in 2012.

In 2012, He started a Los Angeles-based consultancy called Awesome Projects. which consults on editorisl matters for a diverse range of media companies, including The New York Times, Yahoo!, Snapchat, The Hollywood Reporter and Telepictures. He recently teamed up with Cary Woods, producer of Scream, Citizen Ruth and Kids, to start a company that produces documentaries and news-based content for YouTube, Snapchat and Amazon.

References

  1. ↑ "Talk of the Town". The Advocate. Here Publishing: 49–50. August 28, 2001. Retrieved January 11, 2014.
  2. ↑ Carmody, Deirdre (March 2, 1992). "THE MEDIA BUSINESS; Gay, Lesbian Press Is Starting to Emerge Into the Mainstream". The New York Times. Retrieved August 1, 2014.
  3. ↑ Carmody, Deirdre (January 24, 1994). "THE MEDIA BUSINESS; Time Inc. Considers Starting a Magazine for Gay Readers". The New York Times. Retrieved August 1, 2014.
  4. ↑ Grigoriadis, Vanessa. "Monica Takes Manhattan". New York Magazine. Retrieved August 1, 2014.
  5. ↑ Kelly, Keith (May 16, 2001). "BIDS FOR POPE's BOOK". New York Post. Retrieved August 1, 2014.
  6. ↑ Wadler, Joyce; Rutenberg, Jim (April 17, 2003). "BOLDFACE NAMES". The New York Times. Retrieved August 1, 2014.
  7. ↑ Kuczynski, Alex; Fabrikant, Geraldine (January 19, 2002). "Lifelines Cut, Talk Magazine Goes Silent". The New York Times. Retrieved January 11, 2014.
  8. 1 2 Peters, Jeremy W (March 27, 2011). "A New Site Intended to Serve People in Recovery". The New York Times. Retrieved January 20, 2014.
  9. ↑ "Maer Roshan". Cityfile. Archived from the original on January 16, 2012. Retrieved December 28, 2011.
  10. ↑ Seeyle, Katherine (April 11, 2005). "Reviving a Magazine With Ballast of a Web Site First". The New York Times. Retrieved August 1, 2014.
  11. ↑ Davis, Noah (March 19, 2008). "Ellies '08: Radar's Maer Roshan — 'You Just Gotta Keep Showing Up'". FISHBOWLNY. Retrieved August 1, 2014.
  12. ↑ Koblin, John (August 25, 2009). "Where in the World Is Maer Roshan?". The New York Observer. Retrieved August 1, 2014.
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 10/25/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.