Now that Next EIC Justin Ocean's jumping ship to head The Out Traveler, the weekly fag rag's looking for a new leader.

The New York-based magazine's publishers recently put an ad on Media Bistro and the job description includes this queer stipulation: "Must have ability to juggle extreme personalities of nightlife scene and advertisers."

"Extreme personalities" must be the polite way of saying, "Self-important, possibly drugged up diva fags from hell."

More troubles – or improvements? – at Out and The Advocate publisher LPI Media. Bob Cohen, who runs things over there, has just been let go in what looks like a dismissal ordered from the top. That, or PlanetOut Inc. savior Bill Gates ordered it. Jossip has the memo.

We found this story over at Gay City News and thought we'd pass it on to you.

According to Richard Fumosa, managing editor over at Alyson Books, Barnes and Noble cancelled an event for the nebulously titled Paws and Reflect: Exploring the Bond Between Gay Men and Their Dogs after a publicist named Nancy Nicholson said that the book dealt with a "sexual reference with which she was uncomfortable."

Her discomfort arose from "two lines in an imaginative, non-memoir piece" found in two essays about Alexander the Great and Nietzche. The content, it seems, containts content "unsuitable for members of area animal rescue organizations to whom she had planned to pitch the event."

The article goes on to suggest that Nicholson actually didn't cancel the book, but that a representative from Alyson Books actually pulled the plug.

Another source, however, has told Gay City News that the cancellation decision was actually made by Alyson after hearing of Nicholson's concerns. According to that source, Barnes & Noble was willing to go ahead with the reading but Alyson pulled out.

Hmmm, we don't know who to believe on this one. Alyson Books falls under the giant LPI Media umbrella, the same company that brings us such fag-rags as The Advocate and Out Magazine. We're inclined to think they wouldn't pull the plug on the event. We suppose it depends on the amount of unsavoriness found in the contentious two lines. They'd have to be pretty gnarly to end an entire publicity event.

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