Bruno Maddox - Editorship of Spy Magazine

Editorship of Spy Magazine

In mid-1996, Maddox was hired as a senior editor at Spy magazine, a satirical monthly, in New York City. Spy had ceased publication in 1994 but was quickly resuscitated under new ownership by Sussex Publishers Inc., which reduced the magazine's frequency from ten to six issues a year. At Spy, Maddox was assisted by deputy editor Adam Lehner, a satirist. In December 1996, Maddox was promoted to editor-in-chief; his editorial team included Jared Paul Stern and, beginning in late 1997, future screenwriter William Monahan.

Maddox wanted to turn Spy into a national magazine rather than build on its legacy of covering stories that centered on New York. According to Maddox, two factors motivated the shift of target market. The magazine's past objects of satire, the "cheesy villains who anointed themselves as targets" in the 1980s, were no longer on the national stage. Meanwhile, the "sins of the '90s those of a private, quiet cultivation of a sense of purity", and were harder to expose or ridicule.

In early 1998, Sussex Publishers increased Spy's frequency from six to nine issues a year in an effort to boost readership and ad pages. Spy's paid circulation continued to drop during Maddox's tenure, and in March 1998, the magazine once again ceased publication. Sussex's President and CEO John Colman concluded that " great work by Bruno and his team, there just wasn't the acceptance that we need to make it financially viable". Maddox conceded that "a satirical magazine in New York in the late Nineties really had no function", because "everyone was being very modest and coy".