Will Leitch, managing editor of Black Table interviews Maer Roshan, publisher of the new Radar Magazine. Roshan discusses the explosion of publicity surrounding the magazine’s launch, his editorial approach, where Tina went wrong with ‘Talk’, his readers, and most importantly, that Elizabeth Spiers (I now know that’s “spy-ers”, not “speers” as in Britney…sorry I had it wrong, Elizabeth) of Gawker will become a regular contributor. Now, that alone is worth reading every issue of Radar! Excerpt:
Black Table: You were recently in Milan, “trolling for advertisers,” as you said. Are you still fundraising? Who you going after? Do you have a magic number of cash you’re trying to raise? We’ve heard Harvey Weinstein is an investor. Is that true? If it is, dude, what’s with his skin?
Maer Roshan: I trolled pretty successfully, I guess. We came home with lots of new advertisers, and we’re continuing to make steady progress on fundraising as well. In our first round we raised more than $1.5 million, at a time when squeezing money out of investors was as difficult as finding a three-syllable word in Lucky. We estimate that we’ll need $10 million or so to take the magazine to profitability. It certainly won’t be easy, but our launch issue was very successful, and the economy seems finally to be going our way, and there are lots of smart people helping out and lots of interest from intriguing quarters, so I’m feeling pretty confident. But who is this Harvey you speak of?
