Maer Roshan

Maer Roshan (born August 13, 1967) is an American writer and editor who founded Radar Magazine and the website Radaronline.com. He has also served as Features Editor of Interview, Editor in Chief of QW, Deputy Editor of New York, and Editorial Director of Talk. He recently founded TheFix.com, a high-profile daily website that reports on addiction, recovery and the drug war.

Early life

Born in Teheran, Iran, Roshan moved to New York with his family in 1979, following the Islamic Revolution. He has written for The New York Times, the Miami Herald, New York, The New Republic, The Advocate, Details and Harper’s Bazaar. ^{[1] [2]}

QW, Interview, New York, Talk

Roshan began his journalism career in 1989 as a police and military reporter at the Key West Citizen and later, The Miami Herald. He launched his first magazine, the gay weekly QW, in 1991.^[3] Soon after, Time Inc. hired him to create a national gay glossy, Tribe,.^[4]

In 1994, Roshan became Deputy Editor of New York, where he produced some of the magazine's most high-profile stories, including exclusive interviews with Monica Lewinsky, Howard Stern and Louis Farrakhan Maer Roshan Archive New York Mag. He was the first reporter to interview Donatella Versace after the murder of her brother. Gianni Versace, in 2000, together with the designer's best friend, Elton John. He e

Hired by Tina Brown in 2001 as Editorial Director of Talk, Roshan was credited by Adweek with "quickly turning around the struggling publication, raising circulation by 18% in six months."^[5] Brown called him "the only real natural male magazine editor of his generation."^[6]

Then-Miramax Chairman Harvey Weinstein closed the magazine after the advertising market collapse following 9/11. ^[7]

==Radar, Radaronline, TheFix.com Founded in Roshan’s living room and produced by a tiny staff, Radar attracted outsized buzz long before it published its first issue.^[8] Weinstein was among its initial investors.

When the magazine debuted in June 2003, The New York Times hailed it as "the launch of the year." After raising enough funds to publish two sold-out "test issues" Radar disappeared from the newsstands while Roshan went looking for long-term funding.^[9]

A year later he raised an estimated $10 million from billionaires Mort Zuckerman and Jeffrey Epstein, who had been part of a high-powered consortium to buy New York in 2003.^[10] Roshan was designated to be editor of New York if the deal went through. When they lost their bid to buy New York Roshan convinced the billionaires to invest in his fledgling magazine. Zuckerman told the New York Times that he was ready to wait seven years until the magazine became a financial success. But less than a year later, Zuckerman and Epstein abruptly pulled out of the project, though the magazine had collected over $2 million in advertising for the next quarter. A month after the moguls shuttered the magazine, Epstein was jailed for a string of sex abuse violations on minors in South Florida.^[9]

A few weeks later, the franchise won new backing from Integrity Multimedia, a company funded by billionaire Ron Burkle and Yusef Jackson, the son of Jesse Jackson. The magazine's investigative features on the Church of Scientology, backstage high-jinks at Disneyland, and military gangs in Iraq generated international attention. After attracting 1.5 million unique visitors in the month of its debut, Radaronline.com, was cited byThe Wall Street Journal and The New York Times as a new model for print magazines struggling to adapt to a new media environment,.^[11]

In May 2008, Radar was nominated for a General Excellence award by the American Society of Magazine Editors, a rare achievement for a fledgling publication.^[12] But as the publishing recession deepened in the Fall of 2008, Radaronline was purchased by American Media, the owner of the National Enquirer and The Star for an undisclosed sum. The site currently generates an estimated four million unique visitors a month.^[13]

Since then, Roshan has served as West Coast correspondent for The Daily Beastand as an online consultant toThe Week.^[14] He has served as a consultant to several television networks. His book, Indochine: Shaken and Stirred,^[15] a memoir of New York nightlife, was published in December 2010 by Rizzoli Press. In April 2011 he launched TheFix.com, a daily website about the drug war, addiction and recovery that has become the leading news source in the recovery community. According to The New York Observer, he recently teamed up with Dany Levy (founder of Dailycandy.com) and David Bennahum (founder of AmericanIndependent.com) to launch Punch a new I-Pad magazine that is reported to debut in 2012.

References

1. ^ The Advocate - Google Books
2. ^ Inside Out
3. ^ Deirdre Carmody, The New York Times, March 2, 1992, "[1]"
4. ^ Deirdre Carmody, The New York Times, January 24, 1994, "[2]"
5. ^ Keith Kelly, New York Post, May 16, 2001, "[3]"
6. ^ Joyce Wadler, The New York Times, April 17, 2003, "[4]"
7. ^ Lifelines Cut, Talk Magazine Goes Silent - NYTimes.com
8. ^ Scott Dickensheets, The Black Table, April 21, 2003, "[5]"
9. ^ ^{a b} Cityfile: Maer Roshan
10. ^ David Carr, The New York Times, October 19, 2004, "[6]"
11. ^ Katherine Seeyle, The New York Times, April 11, 2005, "[7]"
12. ^ Staff, Media Bistro, April 11, 2008, "[8]"
13. ^ Where in the World Is Maer Roshan? The New York Observer
14. ^ John Koblin, The New York Observer, August 24, 2009, "[9]"
15. ^ Staff, Powell's Books, "[10]"

External links

• Maer Roshan Profile/Newsday
• Maer Roshan Interview/Black Table
• Radar Review/ Media Life
• Maer Roshan interview
• Profile/Baltimore Sun

Persondata
Name	Roshan, Maer
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	August 13, 1967
Place of birth	Teheran, Iran
Date of death
Place of death