Granger on Flap Over Esquire's Cover Flap

The February cover of Esquire, featuring—who else?—Barack Obama on its cover, caused a bit of a stir in hardlining church-state circles over a cover “window� that opens up to an ad for the Discovery Channel, as well as a mini-TOC.

Editor David Granger, who’s become something of a serial envelope pusher (see: Esquire’s e-ink cover, margin novella, etc.), claims it wasn’t a gimmick cooked up by some outside the box sales executive at Hearst, but a pure editorial play.  “This was an editorial idea,� he wrote in a post on the American Society of Magazine Editors blog.  “It's one of the several manufacturing gimmicks I presented to my publisher about a year and a half ago as things I would love to do if we could find a way to pay for them.�

RELATED VIDEO: Granger’s Keynote at the 2007 FOLIO: Show

Granger’s reasons for pushing the envelope this time run deeper than his well-documented restlessness with his position as editor of a print magazine.

“I got sick of reading about the demise of print, which is the best, most rewarding medium ever, and I got sick of all forms of print being labeled ‘old media,’� he wrote. “Yeah, print has been around for a long time, but that's because it works really well. Both aesthetically and as a business—which is more than one can say for most forms of ‘new media.’ So we've been trying to find ways to get people to reassess the print medium.�

For its part, ASME said it did not violate any guidelines: “A clever and audacious use of print, yes; an attempt to disguise advertising as editorial or compromise editorial independence, no.�

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By Dylan Stableford --

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