Bob Beauchamp, who has held positions at GQ, Esquire and most recently, Departures, is retiring. Beauchamp got his start in the magazine business when in 1976, GQ‘s Publisher, Sal Schiliro, brought him aboard.

“I didn’t have any experience, but Sal had this confidence that I could do the job,” Beauchamp told WWD. “I was a good dresser and had a certain taste level and had a reputation as a normal person without a big ego.” From there he went to Esquire, and in 1996 he joined Departures.

A party in his honor will be thrown by Departures next Tuesday at the Core Club.

Here’s a look at what FishbowlNY stories made the most buzz this week.

1. Does Matt Taibbi’s Rolling Stone Piece on Michele Bachmann Qualify for Plagiarism? June 24
2. Tina Brown Speaks Out on Creepy Princess Diana Newsweek Cover, June 29
3. Latest Newsweek Features Creepy Princess Diana Newsweek Cover, June 28
4. Village Voice Staffers Set to Strike, Launch Alternative Site, June 28 
5. The New York Post Didn’t Think Gay Marriage Bill Was Important, June 27
6. Bruce Headlam on The Daily Show, June 24
7. Merlin Media Moves Closer to Potential WRXP Flip, Names Walter Sabo COO, June 27 
8. New York Wants Us All to Know When Frank Rich Debuts, June 27
9. Esquire Sued for Over $100 Million Because of Satirical Article, June 29
10. Life at The New York Observer: Treat Trump Kindly, June 27

Keep up-to-date with the latest FishbowlNY news. Click here to sign-up for the FishbowlNY daily newsletter, bringing you our articles each afternoon directly to your inbox.

Joseph Farah, CEO of WordNetDaily.com, and Jerome Corsi, author of Where’s the Birth Certificate? The Case That Barack Obama Is Not Eligible to Be President, are suing Esquire and a writer of a satirical article that they say defamed them. According to Forbes, the two are seeking over $100 million in damages.

The article in question was written by Mark Warren, and posted on Esquire’s Political Blog right after Obama displayed his birth certificate to the nation. In the piece, Warren pokes fun at the book, which had its premise plainly disproven before it was even released.

Esquire even posted an update hours after the post went up explaining the reasoning behind the article, but Farah and Corsi aren’t satisfied.

FishbowlNY has plenty more to say, but we’ll just go ahead and stop here. We don’t want to get sued too.

Esquire is taking a different route than most magazine brands are with the iPad: Instead of just publishing the magazine, it’s publishing apps, like Hardest Puzzle Ever. As All Things D reports, it’s a smart way to use the brand power behind the title:

The idea is to take the publishers’ powerful brands and intellectual capital, and make something that isn’t a digital replica of a print publication.

Hardest Puzzle Ever is a puzzle/trivia game, and it allows users to play the first level for free. After that you must pay $4.99 to continue playing the entire game.

Selling branded apps is a good way for magazine’s to get some money from readers in addition to the magazine, so expect much more of these to emerge over time. Will you end up using them more than once? Probably not, but like your mom probably told you, life isn’t fair.

According to Business Insider, there are some iPad magazines that are just doing it better than others. Today it gathers the 10 best, along with a brief explanation why it deserves to make this list. While all the magazines featured are great, some of the reasons for them being selected fall short.

There’s The New Yorker, included for its simplicity, Self, for the various interactive features, and People, which boasts double the pictures that are included in its print version. Those are all great reasons for being included on the list.

But then, Business Insider says Esquire is in the top 10 because it has “Men’s fashion tips, videos of beautiful women.”

Uh, so does the website. We’re thinking the writer got bored at this point, because that doesn’t really do much for us.

David Granger, Editor-in-Chief of Esquire, told a crowd at the Publishing Business Conference and Expo that the magazine is readying an online retail site called Clad. According to eMedia, the site will offer men’s clothing, and attempt to bridge the gap between the pages of Esquire and shopping. Granger explains:

My motivation for doing this is simple: Magazines have already done one essential thing — we’ve made people want things, whether it’s a better life or better shoes … But for the hundreds of years that magazines have been around, magazines have stopped short on delivering that desire.

He didn’t offer up any specifics about Clad, but did say that it would be connected with “one of America’s largest retailers.”

What could that be? Well, Esquire isn’t one to flaunt the latest looks from Sears, so whichever company it is, it’ll be slightly upscale. J. Crew perhaps? If it’s anything more expensive than that we’ll be emailing the editors, “Hey, wrote about Clad and we love the tweed overalls, any chance for a discount?”

Tweed overalls are going to be everywhere next fall, by the way.

Esquire has launched its 22nd edition, Esquire Malaysia. The magazine, published by Hearst Magazines International, follows the same format found in every other edition, with content covering fashion, politics, art and travel.

Sam Coleman, the Editor-in-Chief of the new edition, had this to say:

Esquire is one of the best men’s fashion publications in the world and the magazine’s investigative journalism and photographic concepts are truly best-in-class.  We’re very excited to introduce this brand to the stylish, intellectually curious men of Malaysia.

We don’t know why Hearst chose to feature Robert De Niro on the cover instead of a Malaysian, but whatever, he could be huge in Malaysia. If that’s the case, those “intellectually curious men of Malaysia” Coleman mentioned must not have seen Little Fockers.

It’s snowing in the city again. That should be enough to annoy the hell out of you, but maybe you have an amazing jacket that keeps you warm despite the weather.

For those of you who aren’t annoyed today, this will do the trick: Tom Junod at Esquire has released transcripts that were taken from his talks with Roger Ailes. FishbowlNY had to share because we don’t like being alone in our misery. Some highlights:

He thinks Fox offers a wide array of viewpoints:

You have to be able to allow both points of view. Look at MSNBC. They have nobody on that doesn’t agree with them. Nobody. I never see anybody who disagrees with them. I don’t know whether their egos can’t handle it or whether they’re… I don’t get it.

He thinks CNN can do a slightly better job:

What the hell’s she doing up there? Look at that print on CNN. Look at that board. You can’t see shit… you can’t see anything. You see that? Now that’s just crazy. Director should have cut away from that shot. Bad shot.

His assistant is Jason Bourne:

She can look at a room of people and say, ‘Watch the fourth guy on the left. He hates your guts.’ Oh, she can read a room. She goes in and she’s very friendly and asks if they want coffee or something, and they think she’s the secretary but she’s reading the room before I go in.

Chris Jones, Writer-at-Large for Esquire, is a good writer. His profile of Roger Ebert in February of 2010 is perhaps his most popular piece, but he’s been churning out quality work for Esquire for years. Jones’ writing is the kind that causes you to reread the article because it made you think, then read it again just to see how the hell he put together words like that. So when he started a blog about writing, it got people talking. Then yesterday, when he wrote a post called “How to be a professional writer,” and nailed what it’s like to be a journalist today, while also blasting Jason Whitlock, the Fox Sports writer in the process, it got people yelling.

In his post, Jones discusses what he thinks makes a great professional writer, and names Whitlock as the antithesis of that:

Well, here’s the stone-cold truth, kids: Jason Whitlock has no soul. He’s neither a good reporter nor a good writer. He’s a bloviator who’s somehow carved out a niche for himself as a kind of anti-establishment figure by making references to The Wire and pretending he’s the second coming of Ralph Wiley, when Ralph Wiley would be fucking mortified to be associated with Whitlock’s brand of self-serving buffoonery.

Jones tells FishbowlNY that he singled Whitlock out because he encapsulates everything that is wrong with writing today. It worries him that Whitlock’s style is what young writers think will lead to success in the industry.

Read more

People either love or hate Roger Ailes. He’s either a hero or a villain. That’s what happens when you’re the President of Fox News – there’s really no gray area. Tom Junod of Esquire takes an in-depth look at the highly-divisive Ailes in “Why Does Roger Ailes Hate America?” and by the end provides more ammo for each side.

Junod writes the piece as if he’s talking to Ailes, and though parts are a little cheesy, overall it’s a great read. Early on Junod probes Ailes on why he refuses to use a Blackberry. Ailes says that he finds using one beneath him, but Junod doesn’t stop until finding out the truth, that Ailes is too immature to use one:

He did it time and again, fighting fire with fire, intemperately answering every intemperate e-mail that came his way with no insult or complaint beneath his notice, until his public-relations staff, fearing that the Ailesian e-mails might become public and that their boss was having too much fun, concluded that maybe giving a man like Roger Ailes a BlackBerry wasn’t such a good idea after all.

Because FishbowlNY can be counted on the “villain” side of the debate regarding Ailes, the observation Junod garnered from Dick Wald, a professor at Columbia University’s School of Journalism, was particularly striking:

Read more