"Three or four people leaving is not a big deal," insisted Maer Roshan, founder and editor in chief of Radar.
Actually, it's five: Senior editor Tyler Gray, en route to Blender, just had his last day at the magazine, as did managing editor Leigh Ann Boutwell, who is joining her boyfriend on the West Coast. On the business side, the magazine's president, Fred Poust, fled Radar's East 45th Street offices on May 30, along with finance director Dwight Holovach and Web site general manager Michael Small, who came in with great fanfare from Entertainment Weekly and Rolling Stone.
As the news of these departures trickled out via Gawker and Portfolio.com over the past week, that nearly annual, sickly feeling began to creep back: Is the twice-resurrected magazine--perennially pitched as the irreverent, media-savvy heir to Spy--in trouble?...
Along with the redesign, there are other signs that Radar hasn't given up quite yet. Ana Marie Cox, who gave up her staffing position at Time and went on contract there in April, has joined the roster of contributing editors. "I'll be doing a regular Radar-ish take on Washington," she told Off the Record. "Believe it or not, I'm just happy to have a place that's as good as Radar for the kind of writing I want to do. I've never been good at judging a publication's longevity."