Ed Needham

Ed Needham is an editor in journalism.

Salon.com, The Guardian, and Los Angeles Timescriticized Needham's 2002 appointment as editor of Rolling Stone as likely to end the high quality journalism for which the magazine was known and replace it with lad mag marketing from Needham's past magazines.^[1][2][3] The Hartford Courant remarked that Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner had great hopes for Needham.^[4]

Needham noted that magazine covers featuring women outsold those which featured men.^[5] For the November 14, 2002 issue of Rolling Stone he presented Christina Aguilera naked with a tag line calling her a pop princess with a dirty mind.^[5][6] A 2021 Washington Post retrospective of magazines remarked that this kind of portrayal was not common before or after that era of publishing.^[5]

Needham stayed with Rolling Stone for about a year, after which in 2004 he became editor of Maxim^{[7][8][9][10]}

Needham was the launch editor of Coach, a free health and fitness magazine for men, predominantly distributed in London. Dennis Publishing invested £3million in the title and although it achieved a circulation of 300,704 the magazine closed after 14 months.^[11][12][13]

Strong Words

In 2017 Needham began planning Strong Words, a literary magazine.^[14]

In a 2019 interview Needham discussed his past 18 months as editor of Strong Words, a literary review magazine.^[15]

In interviews around the year 2020 Needham discussed his past as a corporate executive but in the post-digital publishing market, solo management was a better fit.^[16][17]

References

1. Elder, Sean (29 June 2002). "The death of Rolling Stone". Salon.
2. Baum, Geraldine (17 June 2002). "What Rolling Stone Hopes to Gather Next". Los Angeles Times.
3. Wells, Matt (24 June 2002). "Lose the words". the Guardian.
4. Weiss, Tara (14 June 2002). "CAN NEW EDITOR REVITALIZE OLD ROLLING STONE?". Hartford Courant.
5. Goldstein, Jessica M. (2 March 2021). "'Reading the story today makes me cringe': Female stars and the media machine of the early 2000s". Washington Post.
6. "2002 Rolling Stone Covers". Rolling Stone. 12 May 2004.
7. Carlson, Peter (4 May 2006). "How Does It Feel?". Washington Post.
8. Carr, David (10 July 2004). "A Top Rolling Stone Editor Is Lured to Maxim Magazine". The New York Times.
9. "Maxim lures Rolling Stone's Needham as editor-in-chief". www.campaignlive.co.uk.
10. Peters, Jeremy W. (28 June 2010). "A Magazine Back on a Roll". The New York Times.
11. Sweney, Mark (2015-10-06). "Dennis Publishing to launch free health and fitness magazine". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2023-02-17.
12. Ponsford, Dominic (2016-05-11). "Latest entrant to growing free magazine market Coach celebrates first ABC of 300,000". Press Gazette. Retrieved 2023-02-17.
13. "Coach magazine to close". www.inpublishing.co.uk. Retrieved 2023-02-17.
14. Browne-Swinburne, Jess (28 Oct 2020). "Ed Needham - Editor - Strong Words". ppa.co.uk. Professional Publishers Association.
15. Anthony, Andrew (5 October 2019). "Ed Needham: 'Top editors' jobs have all vanished'". the Guardian.
16. Houston, Peter (29 June 2020). "Strong Words' Ed Needham on his corporate past and solo future". Media Voices.
17. Akam, Simon; Lloyd, Rachel (29 December 2020). "#98: Ed Needham, magazine editor". Always Take Notes.