In December, citing unnamed ex-employees, Bercovici wrongly reported that Stuff magazine was for sale. In fact, I told Bercovici a few days earlier in a telephone interview that it was absolutely untrue. Two weeks later, when it was painfully clear that there were no reputable sources or evidence for the story, Bercovici issued a retraction.

It is humiliating for WWD's March 4th issue to include an article where the overwhelming majority of the quotes and cited sources used to derogate Maxim and Stuff are "one long-time employee who lost his job [at Dennis Publishing]," "one former Dennis employee," "one source," "a Dennis source," "former Maxim... editors," and "one former editor."

In this article, Bercovici uses misleading standards and statistics to favor Emap's FHM (and, by implication, Advance Publications' own GQ and Cargo) at the expense of DPI's Maxim and Stuff. All of the circulation numbers that Bercovici cites individually for FHM are from first half 2004 while the numbers for Maxim and Stuff are from the second half 2004.

Nor does Bercovici mention anything about average subscription price, a clear and preferred measure of the strength of reader interest. For December 2004, the average reported prices for the three titles were: Maxim, $14.73 per annualized subscription, $1.23 per copy; Stuff, $13.26 per annualized subscription, $1.10 per copy; and FHM, $12.00 per annualized subscription, $1.00 per copy.

In conclusion, Bercovici's article makes loaded comparisons and innuendoes that disparage Maxim and Stuff while conveniently ignoring real industry-accepted circulation yardsticks and basic journalism tenets. Stripped of these distortions, the facts confirm a rather different story: Maxim and Stuff magazines are phenomenally successful businesses with tremendous circulation and vitality, two of the biggest men's brands in the world, with name recognition and brand extensions that are the envy of the industry.