David Granger is the editor in chief of Esquire, the magazine for Man at His Best, known for honoring Women We Love and recognizing Dubious Achievements. Granger, who joined the title six years ago after serving as executive editor of GQ, is now celebrating Esquire's 70th anniversary with an October issue that delves into the magazine's illustrious past.

But I Want Media is interested in Esquire magazine today: Was giving an assignment to Jayson Blair a mistake? Has the emergence of Maxim impacted men's magazines? Even though one of Granger's contributing editors is a member of the Fab Five, do Esquire readers watch "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy"? Granger answers these questions and more.

I Want Media: Statistically, they say, a lot of magazines don't last beyond their first couple of years of publication. Why has Esquire endured for 70 years?

David Granger: First, it was the original men's magazine. Arnold Gingrich created Esquire as a reaction to what he saw as the tyranny of women's magazines in the early 1930s. There was no place for men to go. He felt like a stranger in a strange land in virtually any magazine. Even though it was a tough time, the Depression, he hit a nerve with American men. Esquire has fired men's imaginations by publishing the best writing of the 20th century -- and on into the 21st century.

From the very first issue, there has been an appreciation for men of women. We just finished our November issue as a look back at Women We Love, and it's hilarious all the ways that Esquire has shown its appreciation of women, starting from those [George] Hurrell photos of starlets through the illustrations of the Petty Girls and the Vargas Girls up to the great photography of great women today.

IWM: Your October issue includes a gallery of notable covers from the past, including George Lois's legendary high-concept covers from the 1960s, like the one of Andy Warhol in the soup can. Why do magazines today seldom publish such distinctive, graphic covers? Do they simply not sell at the newsstand?

Granger: That's the basic issue. It's feared that those kinds of covers won't sell. At various times during my time here we've done more concepty, graphic covers, and generally it's kind of a tough sell.

I remember having a conversation a few years ago with David Newman, a former editor with the magazine in the '60s, who just passed on recently. He and Robert Benton, now the film director, invented Esquire's Dubious Achievements; Benton was an art director at the magazine. And Newman told me that even back in the '60s, even with those great covers, they would sit in meetings and say, "Why can't we sell on the newsstand?" Even back then it was a struggle to sell those concepty, beautiful graphic covers. It doesn't mean we should never try to do them, but it is a bit of a risk. You know, Newman and Benton wrote the screenplay of "Bonnie and Clyde" in Esquire's offices in their spare time.

IWM: They must've had a lot of spare time.

Granger: I think it took them about four years. They were very creative, ambitious young men.

IWM: Esquire has a rich literary history, publishing Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Capote, and on and on. But many magazines today are revising their formats to publish primarily short, bite-size articles. Is publishing long, literary pieces still commercially viable for a leading magazine?

Granger: Any commercial magazine that wants to try to do more ambitious pieces has to give readers two separate experiences. There are two ways that even the smartest reader reads a magazine. There's the 15 minute read, when you're flipping through it -- you're in the bathroom, you're on your way somewhere. Then there's the two-to-three-hour read. And I think that a magazine these days has to serve both of those needs.

Esquire has always been good at telling stories. Over the last three or four years we've concentrated on combining that with an experience that can be had in a shorter amount of time. We hope that the shorter experience will lead readers into the longer experience.

That said, the magazine culture I think is dividing into two camps. There are a lot of magazines today that exist almost without sentences. They exist primarily with images and captions. At the same time, there are magazines like The New Yorker and The Atlantic Monthly that are seeing a resurgence because they're publishing good, thoughtful, news-making stories.

And Esquire, at its best, does both. It's funny and entertaining, but it's also substantial. We believe in words, but we also try to be as visual as we can. A significant portion of the magazine-buying public still finds value in reading.

IWM: The lads mags, like Maxim and FHM, have shaken up men's magazines in the past few years, finding success in attracting young male readers. How has Esquire responded to their emergence?

Granger: Their emergence really happened six years ago. When Maxim came into its own it actually helped Esquire to define its mission. It helped us to differentiate ourselves from that movement. Maxim did two things of service to all men's magazines: It created this huge, new pool of readers -- I really don't believe it took very many readers from Esquire or GQ -- and they helped to change people's expectations. It was becoming harder and harder for a magazine like Esquire or GQ to shock anybody. It loosened up expectations of what men's magazines were allowed to do, which isn't a totally negative thing.

IWM: Did Esquire ever consider launching a spinoff aimed at the lads mag readership?

Granger: I've never considered that. I think at various times [Esquire owner] Hearst toyed with the idea of doing a young male version of Cosmo, or something like that, but shied away from it.

IWM: Your October anniversary issue notes that GQ, one of your main competitors, was originally launched as a spinoff fashion title of Esquire. GQ itself has just unveiled a redesign under its new editor, Jim Nelson. What's your opinion of it?

Granger: It's way too early to give my opinion. If I was judged solely on my first issue of Esquire, or even my sixth issue of Esquire, I would have been strung up by my toes.

IWM: Some reports suggest that GQ is transforming into a youth-oriented men's magazine like Details. Is that your interpretation?

Granger: Well, Jim Nelson is a much younger man than [former editor] Art Cooper. His sensibility is younger. I think GQ definitely looks more energetic. Whether it remains appealing to as broad of an audience as Art's GQ did, I don't know. I would hesitate to draw any conclusions based on the first one or two issues. Jim's a good, smart editor, and I'm looking forward to seeing what he does.

IWM: Your anniversary issue also notes that Hugh Hefner in the early '50s was a copywriter for Esquire, and when Esquire relocated its offices from Chicago to New York, he stayed behind and launched Playboy. Today, Playboy has a new editor, James Kaminsky, formerly of Maxim, who is redesigning that magazine for its 50th anniversary. Do you expect that he will Maxim-ize Playboy?

Granger: That's a hard thing to do. Would that mean putting more clothes on the girls? I mean, that's the kind of direction you'd have to go, I guess. If he's able to refresh the Playboy formula he might have some success. But Playboy's so far out of the realm of magazines I'd consider as competition that I just haven't paid as much attention to it as I should.

IWM: David Pecker of American Media is currently redoing Men's Fitness as a lifestyle magazine, adding financial, fashion and entertainment coverage. Doesn't that sound a lot like Esquire?

Granger: I remember when Men's Journal was being redone. They said they were going to add more lifestyle to be more like Esquire and GQ, and I thought that that was a very flattering thing to say. But unless you do it really well it's a very difficult row to hoe. Is there a more vague word than "lifestyle"?

IWM: Isn't that how Esquire is described?

Granger: Esquire is a men's magazine, man. That's who we are. We explore better ways for a man to live his life. But it's also a thought-leader magazine and it's also in certain ways a service book in its instruction of all aspects of a man's life. We're a lot of things, but I'm most comfortable when Esquire is referred to as a men's magazine.

IWM: Jayson Blair, the former reporter behind the scandal at the New York Times, was assigned by Esquire to write a movie review of "Shattered Glass," about plagiarist Stephen Glass. Why did you end up killing the assignment?

Granger: It was intended to be one of those sort of amusing little pieces that a reader will kind of stumble upon and say, "Ah, that's clever." We do these things on a regular basis. Like, we had John Updike's kid review Saul Bellow's kid's book about nepotism. It's a thing that David Letterman used to do very effectively in the early days of his show, a segment he called Limited Perspective. He would find somebody who's got a very narrow viewpoint and ask them to review something within that specialty. But once people started writing about what we were doing I thought the joke wasn't amusing anymore.

IWM: Did you receive a lot of flack for giving Jayson Blair an assignment?

Granger: I got a number of letters from concerned readers and subscribers -- probably a few dozen.

IWM: What did they say?

Granger: They asked me not to publish him.

IWM: Looking back, do you think that the assignment was a mistake?

Granger: Absolutely not. It was a funny idea. In Man at His Best we try to have clever ideas. It was probably one of about 20 assignments we make every month. We hope to get six to eight good things out of that to run. There was no certainty it was going to run. He never wrote it. I mean, if it came in and it was funny, we could have considered running it. I just don't think you should censor ideas. If somebody has a good idea it should be considered seriously.

IWM: What do you think of Jayson Blair's reported book deal to write his memoir?

Granger: I don't know Jayson Blair. I think what he did at the Times was reprehensible. His efforts will be judged by the public. If people don't want to read a Jayson Blair book they won't read a Jayson Blair book.

IWM: You were an editor at GQ before you joined Esquire six years ago. And before that, you were an executive editor of Adweek and Mediaweek magazines. Is anything happening in the media landscape that you find interesting?

Granger: The thing that intrigues me the most is how invasive advertising is becoming in virtually every entertainment or information medium other than magazines and newspapers. Like how seamlessly advertisers are worked into a TV series like "24," where every car on the series is a Ford. Or where on ESPN you've got what is essentially a news interview feature called "The Budweiser Hot Seat." It's like advertising and content are becoming seamlessly connected. Magazines always make an effort to make sure that there's a separation between what an advertisement does and what editorial does.

IWM: The New York Times this week reported on magazines where advertorials have been produced by editorial staffers ...

Granger: I'm on the board of the American Society of Magazine Editors, and that's something that we try to keep an eye on. It's expressly forbidden in the bylaws of ASME. It's something that we're working hard to make sure doesn't happen. Readers must be able to trust that the information a magazine gives them is not compromised by the advertisers.

IWM: One of your contributing editors at Esquire, Ted Allen, is now a big TV star as one of the Fab Five on "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy."

Granger: He's a big star now. God bless him.

IWM: What's been the reaction to his new fame around the Esquire offices?

Granger: We always thought Ted was famous. He's always comported himself as a famous man. [laughter] I'm very happy for Ted. He's incredibly excited. He's caught up in the whirlwind of early fame, and I wish him all the best.

IWM: What does he write about for Esquire?

Granger: He's contributed a wide variety of stories. He did a story on male breast cancer a few years ago that was nominated for a National Magazine Award. It was a great piece of reporting. We had this feature we ran in the magazine, Things a Man Should Know -- sex, wine, work -- and it became a book series that Ted wrote with another one of my editors.

IWM: Details editor Dan Peres has said that the readers of his magazine -- the so-called metrosexuals -- don't need to have five gay men telling them what's stylish. What about the readers of Esquire? How does the Esquire man respond to "Queer Eye"?

Granger: When I watch that show, I kind of feel sorry for these guys who are so hopeless that their girlfriends have turned them in to the fashion police. I think Esquire's readers already have an understanding of how to present themselves to the world. What we try to do is help them refine that understanding. I'm not sure Esquire readers are the audience for "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy."