The Turnaround Artist: Janice Min on Magazines and #Metoo

Real Housewives. She tripled circulation and generated billions in ad revenue. Then she left to transform another magazine, The Hollywood Reporter. It was a drab daily when Men took over in two thousand ten. It sucked up to the studios and basically nobody read it. Now it breaks news in every issue I must read for industry players. So when I was recently in l A shooting Will and Grace, I wanted to get Janice Men's take on the business side

of TV trends. All these shows that are rebooting now, like Murphy Brown, I mean, now we'll see the ends. I think, like everything in Hollywood, they will exhaust it to the point where everyone rolls their eyes, but then you know ten percent of them will work out great. And Will and Grace is the prime example of that. It's like they never left and it worked and people

are happy with it. If these things are cynically done thinking the audience still comes, but they don't put in the effort to make it good, then the audience isn't there. And I guess it's as simple as that. Right then. I watch a lot of other shows, but like Stranger Things and Black Mirror, I don't get it, and I wonder if that's what's leading people back to the Will and Gration would give me a net work half hour

like it's familiar, it's comfortable, I think, you know. I mean, they're probably a hundred shows I've watched one episode of at this point. I think that's probably incredibly frustrating if you're a show creator, because there's no runway for someone to fall in love with episode three where things get really good, and I remember there's this hilariously sad statistic about how long people listen to a song on like Pandora or Spotify or whatever before they hit fast forward,

and it's three seconds. And it's like swiping right and left on tender. It's what everyone's fighting against in Everything right, Everything content, Catzenberg wants to do five minute contents from right, Yes, I want, I want something. While you're online at Starbucks. I got a show for you. It's five minutes long, right right, there's a coffee waiting for you at the end of that show. Correct in the arc of your career of the last several years, do you find you

have less time to consume any entertainment problem? My god, I think I think the Janismen have like groovy screenings of movies at our house, celebrity friends or no. That is that is a very much not the case. I think there was always this running joke at The Holloway Reporter that one day someone should do the Janisman Film Festival showing all these movies that I have never watched

while I was while I was editing. I can't sit here and embarrass myself on your Yes, but some of the greatest movies of our generation have somehow not made them in front of you. So I will often be watching, you know, The Godfather on American Airlines, and you know, like, this is really good good. This is one of the

things I think is interesting about editing. I'm not adept at that many things, but I think I am adept at this, which is being able to hear what other people are saying about things to divine from that what the story is without ever actually having to see the movie, see the television show, but sort of understanding the trends or cultural meaning or business story or whatever behind the product. You became the executive editor of US Weekly in two

thousand two. Yes, I remember when I was making films, mostly in the nineties. The studio they want a good push, and they want a lot of pr and there's a lot of insistence on you doing a lot of media to sell the movie, and you do magazines and you're terrified the writer might get you and they might not get you. And US was very kind of soft and very people ask whatever. And then when you took over, they kind of you kind of juiced it up and it became much more tough if you will, or what

language would you use? When you took over us? The mission was to do what When I started this weekly, I think I was uh, let's say, thirty one years old, and um so I was an executive editor to this famous and someone's an infamous editor named Bonnie Fuller. She'd been this figure in publishing in New York in the nineties where she'd gone from Glamour to Cosmo, and it was always wanted another job and was always, you know, one of these New York Post staples where people were

always leaking negative things about her. But she was considered a little bit of a of a publishing savant, and so she took over at US Weekly, hired me as your executive editor. And she had a very sort of aggressive story sense about her, and I believed in this whole crazy thing of like you stay till four am and you leave in the you know, the the sun's coming out, like literally, bread trucks were delivering bread at

the places on the block and um. But she had she and Yahn you know, you know Yan Yawn does not abide by people with a large of ego. And they had these unbelievable clashes and he grew to really not like her and she grew to really not like him, and they would have these spectacular fights over stupid things. But for example, what was their editorial debate. You know, Jan has a ton of celebrity friends, right, and she

was mean, Yes, and thought she was mean. And I don't know if I would characterize this as true, but he believed she was jealous of celebrities, you know, wanted to be one of them. And and that manifested itself in in like a harsher tone than he would have chosen Um. On top of that kind of a unwillingness to defer to his wishes. And you know, if you work for John and I worked for him for seven years and it was very peaceful. If you don't listen to Jan, he will let you know he is unhappy

with you. And so they would have these these things sound so trivial now, but he had wanted some design change on the table of contents and Bonnie refused to do it. And it's something that you know, nobody in the world would have ever noticed, one way or another. And she refused to do it, and he's screaming at her and in his office and he's his beautiful wood paneled office with you know, photos of his family, and and shortly thereafter she was being a contract renegotiation with him.

This was like fourteen months into the job. She had only signed a one year deal and it ends up getting so heated that they have a cooling off period where they don't speak. So I go off on a vacation to Italy and yes, and and then you know, all of a sudden, like Bonnie's desperately trying to reach me, and like she just is one of these people you can't get off the phone, and so I just wasn't responding to her. Was like my first real vacation since I had worked for her. And then suddenly I find

out she'd just quit. And Yan tracks me down at Italy, and because John is John, he finds me in this tiny restaurant outside of Florence and the waiter comes over. He's like, I have a Mr. Winner for you on the phone, and Jan offers me the job and like I'm just like a nobody, and it's it's the whole thing started freaked me out. I could I do this? Why would I want to do this? Like I don't want to be public, I don't want to be criticized.

And I saw how mercilessly Bonnie was treated in the press, and I didn't know if I was comfortable with that. And then what did he see in well, a solution and easy solution right there, I wasn't Bonnie, but also he and I got along well, I think yes, And also I was the one who kept the place functional well well amid Bonnie's chaos. And I think you you've probably seen this a lot of places where you know, where there is a very sort of um challenging number one,

and there there was a number two. You know, a lot of the creative stuff and the ability to actually get people to do things was done through me, and then strength in your mind. Like I really liked John, like Johan so Yan is, like Jan is permanently eighteen years old or maybe even sixteen. He has so much enthusiasm for everything, and he's like brash and rash and impulsive, and I think for some people that can be very unsettling.

But there's sort of probably no better feeling that if you suggest something to John, he's like that's great, and he like bangs the table and he's like, oh my god, that's genius. Let's do it. Let's do it. But then like just as easily you could say, you know, Joan, I had a second thought about that, maybe we should do that, and he's like okay, and like walk out the door, and like he you know, I think there's certain things. I think US Weekly he realized, wasn't necessarily

his wheelhouse. It's not his baby, like Rolling Stone is his baby that he raised. And US Weekly was going to be the A T M. It's going to be the cash machine for him. And he you know, there was also part of this for John where I think he, you know, this is a man who who's Rolling Stone to find a generation and um and US Weekly was another generation that he was not as fluent in, and he realized that. But he had these moments of unbelievable inspiration.

He became really obsessed with The Bachelor when it's when it came on ABC, and so you know, I know, oh yeahn and so I never watched one single episode of The Bachelor in my entire life, which is hilarious given how many times it would then appear on the cover of US Weekly. But Jan had this there was this one. There's one bachelor named Andrew Firestone, who was I think the second Bachelor to come along and yawn like he just this crazy whim He's like, I believe

in it. Let's put him on the cover. And so you know, like all right, John, you know it's your magazine, and we put Andrew Firestone on and he was he was engaged to the win or and I can't believe remember all their names, Jen Scheft. And it became the highest selling issue of US Weekly in its history at that time. And so, you know, one of the crazy things was pre web metrics, and you know US Weekly didn't even have a website at this time. And this

wasn't even that long ago. Was the thirteen years ago. You would live and die by these news stand sales. So you would put an issue out, let's say Thursday night or Friday morning, and so you would get all the scan data. And there these companies that do nothing but scan UPCs. They count the UPCs for you from the biggest retailers, and one of them is Walmart, and you know the other one is you know, some aggregation of maybe like Hudson News newsstands and airports and and

then you can calculate a sales figure from them. And Yan who's like you know, Joan who I don't I think, would tell you he loves money and you know the things that come with money. He um, he was like addicted to it, like the news stand sales, because it was because it was a dollar. So let's every issue you sold over five thousand copies, which is amazing to think anyone can sell anything, you know, more than five thousand copies save publication. Every issue over that he sold,

he made a dollar eighty five. And so you know, after like let's say, after a year of me being there, US Weekly had gone from losing money every issue where it would sell like around two hundred seventy five thousand, and Bonnie got it sometimes touching five hundred thousand. Then it started to as much as one point one or one point two million a week on the news stands. You can imagine what that cash looked like, your money,

real money. So there's a sort of but you know, I think probably you and your audience remember this kind of exuberant I guess, in a rational exuberance at the time of around celebrity. That that is gone. Now it's gone. Write down death of death of Celebrity. You grew up in Atlanta, Yes, your family moved to Colorado, your father towards zoology, your mothers and I R s agents. You grew up in a pretty heavy academic people, pretty smart people.

You go to Columbia School Journalism, so when you're there at this, I'm not going to say to be kind US magazine. In my mind when I was doing a lot of magazine, cars was one of those things on in a pile of other such magazines at the hair salon. And it wasn't like a real serious thing. What did you decide you wanted to do? I just don't like the mean stuff. Necessarily, you show sunny wrapping around us weekly.

So there were things like people smiling. You know. This captured the imagination of young urban women and women who made a lot of money. It was the iPod of publications. It was so cool, and all these other publications followed and couldn't quite be the same. I felt like it could be read on two levels. One like you're just a celebrity fan, you actually care about what Jessica Simpson wears, And the other part of it was a tongue in cheek look at celebrity and you could sort of read

it as a smart person and be entertained. So taking away the ickiness of being the person who goes to the grocery and buys the star or inquirer. The cool person's like celebrity publication and like so when I when I worked at People Magazine, like I would have never read that I was. You know, I started there when I was twenty three, and it was just so middle brow, Middle America. You know, it wasn't quite still talking about

it was there was nothing cool about. It was very like catching up with Lonnie Anderson, you know, and yes, and and you know, and so that this whole other generation of celebrity who were coming up through music, through music videos, through reality television. You know. The first year that I started US Weekly, I think that was the first year American Idol came on air. And so it

was this whole explosion of reality TV. So this intimacy that you know, that's when people started to call celebrities on their first name basis, like Brittany justin Jessica, you know, and the whole thing was like some like giant cotton candy machine. What did you learn at Columbia School of Journalism that you employed when you started working at US Weeknight. I mean, something tells me there's things you learned to Columbia School of Journalism that you employed when you took

over Hollywood Report. But what about well, That's weekly. You know, one of the things. Was employing journalistic practices a ridiculous category to be able to do that kind of celebrity news credibly was I was a big part of US Weekly reaching did the staff did you and the editorial staff did you all sit there and oh god, I can't believe, like you're writing things about people and you have a degree of contempt for the people you're writing.

Think about who were the big US Weekly figures Paris Hilton. There was a show on MTV called The Hills which all young women were obsessed with Dawson's Creek. Jennifer Lopez, She's like the platonic version of an US Weekly star at that time. She loved it, she read it, she played along with it. She's out there getting photographed reading

US We symbiotics, totally symbiotic. And that's the thing that was laid bare when you work at a place like US Weekly is the sort of push pull of needing to be in the press and the desire to never be in the press. And US Weekly was for the people who very much desired to be in the press. And it's like the bonfire of the vanities. People who really made that deal with the press, they thought I'm gonna just tear off a little piece of me and throw it on this fire, and that you consume me

because it's really because because I wouldn't get this attention otherwise. Yes, you certainly aren't going to love because of my work, Right, John and I would have these funny conversations where he was trying to understand, like who is an US Weekly celebrity? And he would say, you know, I just want to see more Danny DeVito and Michael Douglas in US Weekly because they're his friends. You have to arm wrestle with

him about that. I mean, there were times I'm like, I don't care, so put in like both we throw in the occasional picture of Danny DeVito and Reappearlman and you know, and and that that makes you unhappy. And he would literally come down and be like I love that photo. I said, so do I. And that was it. It was It was just it was just a generational shift of um how a certain group of women. And Lindsay Lohan is the other prime example, right, like who was that a big fixture of the US Weekly era.

It's it's it's almost forgotten now. There was a period when she first started to kind of go off the rails where people were very dismayed because Lindsay was enormously talented and the whole Patti Duke thing and the parent trap thought, she's this young, precocious, very talented girl. Little of a sudden that just kind of goes away and she becomes this tabloid fadder. Did you see that? Did? Sometimes it was I can't even tell you how strange

the Lindsay Lohan stuff is. Like she she directly called people on staff all the time. Um, you know, she her mother and you know, like the yeah, the original manager in Gustina that you know would call people on staff. Um, Like like Lindsay was that she was among I'm assuming

other addictions, was completely addicted to the attention, right. And I think if you're a celebrity, and if you're a young celebrity in particular who was raised as a child star, I mean, you know, like there are a lot of celebrities who are just sort of bottomless pits of narcissism, right of need and also not exercising the best judgment at the time. When when do you realize at us

weekly that it's time to go? Yeah, I mean so it's you know, there was I think anyone who does these contractor contract jobs at some point every time you sign one, like a little part of you dies. You're like, I'm here for another, you know, two years or three years, you know, being held hostagen, counting down the days on marking X is on the calendar. And so I never really cared about the celebrities, suff do I think anyone I worked at the time would know I didn't care.

I didn't care about I would not, would not personally sit around and talk about Jessica Simpson and Nicholas And it was sort of you know, total grind for seven years, like grind where you make a lot of personal sacrifice, like you were like twice a week, you come home after midnight and sometimes you come home at two am, and um, like you always like you know, I started out, and I started that job, and we used you know trios if anyone remembers the Palm trio and then it

becomes an iPhone by the end, and like you are just always working, like I don't care how much money I'm going to get paid, because I made a lot of money and I don't need to make more. I think to be able to let go of money anxiety different points in your life is incredibly liberating, right, that's what they tell me. Yeah, And so then you know I went in. So this was after two thousand, two thousand eight, there's a terrible financial crisis. Um, yawn in

two thousand seven. You know something, I'm sure he wishes he could take back where he bought the fift of US Weekly that was owned by Disney at the time. He bought it back for three million dollars he has he had. Then he gets an offer from Hurst to buy the company for six seven hundred million dollars and he doesn't take it, and then you know, boom two thousand and eight and the whole world false and the

multiples at which you could trade a successful publication go nowhere. Right, Like if it was whatever beginning at the end, it's the beginning of the end, and it's like you're in a hole and you can't get out and and so so there was that part of it, um, And I don't know, I just didn't feel like doing it anymore.

The year off. I took a year off here with your family, yes, and like it was great and we just now I have three I had two at the time, decided that we wanted to move to California, which was, um, you know, because why not, right, And and you're in New York. I'm in New York. We live and we lived on Lafayette Street, Lafayette and Prince and soho in New York, I know, and we it's the greatest. Now I wish we miss New York. I do miss New York.

You know, my wife wants to move here. Really well, if your kids, I mean to never have to put a mitten or lose a hat. And you sound like my wife. Yeah, you can't stand in the winter, yes, I mean yes. And I don't know if you read

the under a play spaces totally. So we used to do like having a fourth child, Oh my god, I mean no. There were times in New York where the weather was so terrible and we like and we would do things like should we just go to Target in Jersey City and walk around because there was like nothing, Yes, right near where you are, And that's our day because otherwise I'm gonna look at stuff. Yes, I'm gonna go blow my brains out if I sit at home and

a second longer. So um, and you know there was and there were just these days where like we had these two young boys at the time where they were just like, you know, the Nintendo d X or whatever or DS was new at the time, the handheld and they had and I'm like, I can't have them play video games all day long, right, and my kids with iPads, Like we were gonna you're gonna watch an iPad for it's the electronic leash. We we give them the iPad for this one so we can bathe the other one

totally right. It's just like sit down and be calm. It's like, yes, moralizing modern parenting. So you know, New York is a tough place for a little kid. It's it's it's the best and worst place for a little kids.

And then you know, you move out here and I don't know if you know, there was a semi controversial story about that The New York Times wrote about the l A Times and how basically how lame l A is and you know, all these people like Bill Simmons is outraged on Twitter and people are you know, I think it's like the New York Times, you know, constant

theme of l as a stupid place to live. But like it raised like it raised some good points that like l A has l A's not you know, as The New York Times argued, not like a real city with a real center, like it's the chicist suburb in the world. New York is a mountain range where there's an equivalent height to these mountains. Of all industries. There's publishing and banking, politics, and and and the and law enforcement, and in tech and design, and he said, the entertainment

has its place among those. I go to parties on them. I'm standing in line at Saranac at the famous mansion at Tanglewood. Were at a fund base therefore the for Tanglewood with James Taylor and his wife, and we're there in some tweety looking kind of moynihan esque. Guy turns to me. We're in the buffet line, he says, and what do you do for a living young man? I was like, four time, And what do you do for a living young man? He said? And I thought, I'm

in heaven. So we're gonna have a real conversation over dinner because you don't know who the funk I am. And blah blah blah and and and and in l A one mountain dwarfs sold the other mountain completely and

I find that frustration. And I think one of these was really interesting to me here was just how deeply intertwined social and business are here, right, Like so you don't escape like any of the same people, you know, which is why your friends aren't we and you work with them, yes, um and whereas and I think, you know, one of the things I miss about New York, like you can go you know, when I was at Michael Wolf's book party two weeks ago in New York waiting for my car to pick me up in the lobby,

the dormant and the porter of the building. It was at Michael Wolf's publisher's houses, man named Stephen Rubin, the dormant and the porter like knew everything about the book. We're trash and Trump were like totally like you know, knew the day's news was. They were totally on it. And like that doesn't happen in l a typically right

in New York. You go to Duncan Donuts, that person is on it, right And in New York when things are not kosher, they go nuts and people are like my congressman is who, yeah, my stated something min is who total school board politics is all that matters. Where does my kid go to school? That's the extent of their garden. I mean, it's it is so everything is

so hyperlocal here. I mean it's hyper like you know that do do you know that app next door where you can sort of see what like you just talk to your neighbors within like a two block radius and that like that to me, epitomizes l A And it's like that you don't even need to yeesh. It's it's kind of a thing out here and you don't even need to talk to anyone beyond your two block radius. And it's it's American West, Yeah, it is. It is entirely like it's the conception of the American West. What's

right in front of me? Totally? Do I care about what's coming on over there? What do I care about? Completely? Like like like the man, you will And it's like it's also like nimbism. So so you take the year off and re acquainted with your family, have another baby, be acquitted with your husband, and have another baby, and when the time's up, you know, you have a copy of the Hollywood Reporter your hand and going man if

I could get my hands on this operation. What I would know Originally were going to move to Marin County like I I sort of had, like my husband, I really loved Marin County. We had we had been on a house, and of course, because it's Morin County, we were immediately outbid and um. And so then right around that time, my favorite Page six had run an item about my apartment being for sailors selling. And so then there was this executive who had been at Condonas who

was sort of notorious and legendary named Richard Beckman. And so Richard Beckman had and he was an ad sales guy, and he had been the publisher of Vogue and Vanity FAIRN and UM. And so he had connected with this um private money outfit called Googleheim Partners, and they had acquired this group of sort of sad trade titles and included Billboard, ad Week and The Hollywood Reporter, The Red

and the Green. We used to quote, oh, how funny, okay when we first came to when I first came to Hollywood, my friends would say, you gotta subscribe to the Red and the Green. That's so funny, Okay. I'd never heard that that's great. So the so Richard Beckman's desperately trying to reach me after saying page six, this is like a scene out of Working Girl and she finds out something, you know, something in page six and like Chase when Melanie Griffin's character chases it. And it

was funny. I have a publicist friend, uh named Alison Broad in New York and she she knows Beckman from just from being in New York. And she said, I'm sure he wants to talk about the Hollywoo Reporter. I'm like the Hollywod Reporter. That is such a piece of crap, Like I've never even looked at that in my life. And um, so I go, I go, and I meet Beckman at the Bowery Hotel in the restaurant downstairs, and people someone who's jokingly call him like Barnam Bailey and

Beckman like the show comes to town. And he's British and like wild, you know, gesticulation and enthusiasm. But he had this idea. The investors had put him in charge. They made him the see you of these titles and said you know you can do anything, you want anything, and and um, but he said, I wanted to be fabulous. It has to be fabulous and you know which you know, yeah, I think I think he literally may have said, promised me fabulous and so and he said I wanted to

be glossy, glossy. I wanted to be like, you know, I can't remember what he said, like maybe it's like vanity fair and meat to the economist or and this and that and all his little yes and so, I like trying to sell my husband in l A. I was not having it. So for several months we talked about this and then like and it was really interesting to me. I just saw immediately what it should be. He gave me these blank books of paper, this glossy paper, oversized, and I just sat there and I put post its

on every page. I'm like, this is like you'll have this kind of story, this this, this is okay, Like I got it. That's it. I don't think about it anymore. And to me, like I sort of knew. I knew it would succeed, which everybody thinks your thing is going to succeed, but you know, I had a very good feeling about it. And you know, we ended up moving to l A. And it was just like we moved

here July tenth. One of the things I know I had to do was hire people with publishing experience from New York, which does not exist in droves in Los Angeles and certainly not you know not at the time, and hired an art director, creative director, photo director, and whtorm this woman Jennifer Laskie, because she really really did a great job. Yes, Jenni, Yes, Jennifer Laski is a genius, and so this show's go magazine as far. Yes, so Jennifer Laski. And this is how like you never know

what's what someone is really capable of. So Jennifer Laski was a sort of freelance photo editor out of New York and US Weekly used to do these really like hokey things that you know, we're going to be the last gasp to save publishing called book eazines, where you published, you create like little fan things for you saw them in the grocery. So she was the photo of the ones for Twilight, and so she would like sit there and look for pictures of Rob Pattinson and Kristen Stewart.

And but I remember her taste. I was like, wow, like she was finding like the coolest photos of Rob Pattinson, and she had great taste. And so we had a prototype done by let's say, August Writer on my birthday and um, so we took it out to show studios and they're all, you know, you'll never be able to pull this off, Like all this media that covers Hollywood

is doomed. It's you know anyway, what I'm saying is there was a ton of skepticism and also a ton of skepticism about can us weekly lady come and do this very different thing? And you know, I think, um, if people who are here, remember the Hollywood Reporter was not just failing, it was like flat line, I mean like already underground and sort of it had a sadness all around it. So it was definitely like bad news bearers, Like you have the staff who has been misdirected or

not directed for years. They're losing, but it's not necessarily there for right and so like they like there's an inertia that's set in where they don't know, like they don't know what's good from bad because nobody tells them. They don't care. They're burnt out. They need leadership, yes, and so like I kept the staff like all these people.

But I'm sure you'll remember this era of Hollywood were like like the so called trade presses, so beholden to the studios Premiere magazine, Yes, and it just becomes press release central, right, and like you well, I mean in my own case, I do a movie with my ex wife. We do this movie The Marrying Man and the and the Susan Lyne is the head of Premiere Magazine and you realize that the PR department of the studios are

just faxing her the articles what to right. Most of what happened that was painted as misbehaving stars on the set of a movie, much of it was having honest creative differences. When you walk in what really disting, which is the how they would reporter under your tutelage and when you were there under your leadership, is you go to that level where you become a real honest magazine. Yes, you're not like like like Premier Magazine was a shitty magazine.

If someone called me up and they said to me, and I was like a child, that was my I was in my career infancy when someone said to me, what do you think that Premier Magazine is gonna do. They're gonna take your word for it, you and this woman who you're dating, or they're going to do the bidding of the studio that releases thirty movies a year and advertising. Of course you're gonna get crushed. Where does the spine of it becoming a really, really smart magazine

come from? It is so fascinating to me, And I think you see this in so much political coverage, the way they would self censor themselves, Like people come in, they come big, go interview someone and they say, oh my god, like you wouldn't believe this crazy thing someone said, and then you get the story and it's not in there. And I remember this happened several times that I would say to the person, like why is that not in there? Protecting well, I just don't think they would like it.

I'm like, who cares, Like why do you care? Like they said it like then they said it, probably because they want you to use it right and and not not like not like crazy gotcha stuff, but like Hollywood had gotten into the heads of these reporters where they were protecting them but not even supporting them, were financially supporting the publication or whatever, and and you know, I also remember this one time, like, like, you know, I was the new editor and there's this one reporter there

and I'm sure you must remember when Nikki Fink was here, and you know, and so Nikki Fink is is trying to reach this reporter at the office, um no doubt, to try to report something terrible about us. And so I was trying to reach this reporter and the reporter we're in a news meeting. The reporters like, oh my god, Nicky's calling. I have to run out. I'm like, why are you like giving power to someone like that? Like

what is wrong with you? And so they were all kind of like it was like a collective self esteem problem. Who is the executive at Warner Brothers who green lit bringing TMZ to TV? Do you know what it's like to walk down the carters of Warner Brothers and we down one hallway and there's all the people producing films and television that I might be in. And you go down that whole way and there's Harvey Levin, who they're making money off of. Who's out there trying to kill me?

Was it Peter Roth? I mean, who brought TMZ to Warner by them and going like, shame on you, why did you do that? And why are you Because what they realized was, here's head a Hopper, here's Army Archard, here's Walter Winchell, here's Luella Parsons, the old dinosaurs, and

and and and and rowing a Barrett. When I was a little boy round on TV, and the studios would would work really really hard to control and manage their stories about out of wedlock babies and and and and and interracial marriages and abortions and alcoholism and sanitarium there I'm using all the language of that period, and their drug addiction and there this and their d u I s and there, and their divorces and their spousal abuse.

And they would try to bury all that, and then one day some guys wakes up of those because why are we breaking our ass trying to protect these people. Let's make money off of the fornicating prayer ile idiocy of the stars. Why are we protecting the stars? Let's just lay it out there. Janice men started her career as a crime reporter for the local paper in Westchester County on the same beat at the same time in Baltimore, was screenwriting phenom David Simon. Then in both found their

calling men at People. Simon at the TV show based on his book Homicide. They offered me the chance to write the pilot, and I said, maybe wisely, maybe not wisely, because I didn't know what the hell I would have been doing. I said, get somebody who knows what they're doing to do this. I'm a I'm a newspaperman. But maybe unwisely when I saw, uh, the per episode royalty that went to that guy. Yeah. Eventually Simon agreed, and

the rest is TV history. Here the rest of that interview at Here's the Thing dot org coming up, Janice Men and I discuss me too, and Woody Allen. This is Alec Baldwin and you were listening to Here's the Thing. For nearly twenty five years, Janice Men has been at the white hot center of celebrity journalism, covering stars and

the business of selling them. So she's seen the sexism and discrimination in show business up close, edited dozens of articles about it, and Janice Men worries that the Harvey Weinstein moment is being squandered. Her concern is this that powerful men who could be pushed to solve structural problems are getting a free pass because of the focus on

individual sexual harassers. I'm afraid of revolution without a successful outcome. Right, And this is the thing that I find frustrating about Times Up and me Too and all this stuff, this culture or of victimology among women, right that like, women have no agency, they have no ability to control these

situations or get out of them. And I understand there's a power and balance and you felt indebted walk out the door, and like there's certain things where you're reading them, and some of its generational, I think, but the season sorry thing I'm reading and I'm like, Okay, where's the bad part, where's the bad farm? Like what? Like that's it's done? And like I like and and let's focus less on disease and sorry, And I don't want you to ignore that because because because men need to learn how.

And I say this to my daughter, who's twenty two, I said, they remember when she was like fifteen. I remember sitting to her down and I said to her, Remember, I said, it's not only that men will say anything to get you to do what they want. Because men will say anything to get you to do that. I said, some of them are very good at it, right, Like from a very young age, how do you teach girls to not feel disempowered in these relationships they have when they go into work and with boys and with men

and people at a higher level. Men they've been painfully silent on these issues, and it's sort of women losing it over this stuff and scaring men to death and so how but it's but how do you actually move this conversation to something productive where you actually create a path for better gender representation and positions of power and making it making a very striking kind of bold move

that's going to have some residents. For example, I mean, if this is off the top of my head, the famous movie star is on the set of the film and she says, I'm not going to come to work tomorrow right until you have the head of the studio come down here lunch with me. I'm gonna shut down the film to have Bob so and so come down. What are you guys gonna do? I don't feel comfortable working for your company. Yes, you had Rattner here, Brat rat Pack or whatever. Tell me what you're going to do.

What are you actively doing to make me for and really get the people who have the juice. Who's in charge? What do we do? You can you can get all the z s and sorry as you want when we get the people that are in charge of the networks in the studios to probably you know you saw Gal Wonder Woman. She you know she did that right, She said Brett Ratner couldn't be a part of Wonder Woman too or whatever, and so she got him off the film.

But I think fundamentally there's such a power structure and see this in the pay inequity stuff that is becoming sort of an all consuming topic here, like, but all of it sort of tied into the same thing about who has power and who has the ability to exploit that power, And it is a male female thing, but it's also is the sort of culture of the town. But the real thing is there's something uncomfortably pornographic about the kind of endless outing of the sexual story masturbatory.

You can out mental the end of time, like you could do it every day. You can have a news channel devoted to this um. But the Hollywood thing is particularly frustrating to me. And you know, Amanda hasn't New York Times wrote a scathing story about the Times Up movement the other day about how it's all just activism and not action, right, basically taking the actual hard questions about Hollywood and power and abuse and turning it into a fashion moment. It's not, it's not. It's not really

going to get us anywhere. I really want to see somebody. I keep saying, you've got to convict Harvey. If Harvey is a guy who got mossad agent is trying to bury all the people who he raped, let's get him in jail. My mistake has been that I thought that certain things went without saying. If Woody Allen is guilty of what they claim he's guilty of, you don't think

I want him punished for that in whatever way. But put yourself in this position, which is it's the sentencing phase of a horrible crime, and his mother is sitting there in the front row for him in the car. It's her son. They're my friends. My impulse is to help them, to understand them, and to support them. If men that I know, Jimmy Toback is one. If men that I know are guilty of some crime, I don't

even to skate on that because I'm an actor. We're trained to think about alternatives, what might have happened, what might you have done to have When I see men by their own hand destroy their lives and ruin the lives of their wives and their children, and their name is shipped for the rest of them, I find that very disturbing and very very painful. But Harvey Weinstein, he's the low hanging fruit, and you've got to prosecute him, and you've got to convict him, so everybody understands there's

real consequence. Just talking about it in the press and talking about on Twitter and and and retweeting articles from Ronan this and this one and that one and all the people who are supportive. I said, that's not going to get it done. You need to have a trial. But the Woody thing is so complicated, you know, and he is his worst character witness, right, all the circumstantial and is like, you know, it is never going to

prove to you. And people who don't believe he sexually assaulted his daughter that he did it, and and um, but it doesn't help, It doesn't help, It doesn't help. Well, those movies don't help. They do not help. And there I think there are people who think on that fact alone, he should go away. He needs to, you know, never work again, because he made movies that today could be

viewed as incredibly yeah, totally creepy. One of our really fine reporters, Stephen Galloway, had interviewed Woody Allen for the cover of The Holly Reporter that sort of set all of this off, and what he said creepy things in the story, like including in the way he talked about his wife, Sunny, which was you would describe it as sort of highly narcissistic, and how Sunny kind of serves him, Yes, totally.

And so then you know, ron and Pharaoh had put something on Twitter which I saw and he said, I loved Janiceman, but what what the hell was she thinking?

And because Rona didn't feel like Steven had pushed Woody hard enough on this alleged sexual assaults of his sister, and like we say to Rout and okay, write something about it then if you want, and you know, he wrote this very well argued, well written essay about how Hollywood has skated over the Woody Allen issue and does not believe and which is so funny to think about now, but does not believe accusers, and you could see the

winds of change coming. That story took off huge, and it was just came as enormous thing to the New Yorker piece. Let me ask you this because we're gonna run out of time. At one point, I was supposed to go to Columbia School of Journalism. I was gonna do a program with you, and you couldn't make it correct. It's gonna be on the panel? Was you? Me and Nick Denton? Oh my god? And I was told then your schedule change and you couldn't come. And when you

dropped that, I dropped. I said, I'm not gonna go with I'm not I was not a fan of Denton and that operation when they went bankrupt and that whole thing happened with Hulk Cogan. What did you think about that? God?

You know, okay, so obviously there were so much schaden freud in the ether about that, right, and then you're like, uh, Peter t. Eels bank rolling this, and you know, and then you like Charles Harder and I started to get like, then you started to feel sort of icky about it, and then you come around to like and so Nick dn and I always have gotten along, and for whatever reason, they never went out thest the terrible things about me, but they never went after me as one of their

characters that they like to torture. And so um, I think people feel kind of wistful about some of their stuff now because sometimes, like whatever moment we're in with this Trump moment, like one of the things that I find refreshing is like people will just say anything now and do anything right, like any sort of polite veneer on the truth. You can just blow it away, right, And I think that was one of the things Gawker did.

And so you see some of what they reported on like Louis c. K. Right, I saw a lot of references to that when the Louis k staff out, Yes, and Gawker was the first to sort of get into that story. And so like a really good Gawka writer could write about the absurdity of all of it, right, And so I missed that. But you know, it's scary. It's had a very severe chilling effect where you believe

a journalistic organization, a single attorney can bankrupt you. You know, I think these decisions that were probably treated much more cavalierly, and that's the wrong word, but much more boldly. In an operation, you're made to scrutinize them much more. And you know there was UH and this under this threat of like a Charles Harder or one of these attorneys. And you know Charles Harder as you saw with Harvey Weinstein, and he did it with one of our journals of

the Holly Reporter, Kim Masters. They create this whole strategy, and they did it with Lisa Bloom where you no longer you no longer undermine the story, which you can't somebody's can't just speak, you undermine the journalist. And you know with UM, with Kim Masters, she was reporting on Roy Price at Amazon his whole sexual harassment of a showrunner who was involved with the Man of the High Castle and UM, and they created this fake story that they said to Matt Belanie, who was the editor took

over for me UM, that Kim Masters had been UM. Well, you know she was soliciting money from Roy for her show on casey r W. She has a show on Case r W called The Business about Hollywood. And you know when he said no, that's when she decided to go after him. So then you can set up this whole delicious intent argument that can get in people's heads. And so Kim, Kim, who would like never she is

like the most straight arrow journalists of all time. So Kim no. So that So you know, they said it's in an email, and so they go through this like weeks of stuff where then finally, you know, the Holy reporters attorneys and Matt have to say, give us the email. Oh well, well let's we'll get us. You will get you. Of course it doesn't exist, but by that time they've

seeded all this sort of doubt. Yes, and and it's one of these things where, um, I mean, it's sort of what Roger ailsood with Gabe Sherman being able to sort of say the person as an agenda. You know, it'll all come out and core how this person has had it out for me us And you know a lot of newsrooms and Kim had a terrible time. She

shopped that story at multiple other outlets. People were scared like, well, oh, you know, if the Holly reported did in front of there must be something wrong, like why would we run it? And had to go from place to place to place, and finally this outlet that's a you know, very um well regarded upstart called The Information that Comes out of Silicon Valley. It is self funded by by this woman who has family money on her own. She was the one who ran it and when someone else did it

validated it. They weren't sued. Then it became a story to cover. And that was just one example of a story I know. So you can see how you know a thousand other stories probably every week, a ground into nothingness. You're this raging lee smart woman, and you should make movies and TV because we need smart women. God, television,

maybe not movies. Movies are such a long process, and absolutely we're thank you for having That was Janice min, the visionary turnaround artist behind US Weekly and the Hollywood Reporter. This is Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to here's the thing, the company, the conchol