Mounting Debts Leave Detour Scrambling to Avoid Liquidation.

Detour Magazine has taken a major wrong turn.

Faced with mounting debts, failed ventures and internal problems, parent company Detour Media Group Inc. is looking for a partner to help keep the L.A.-based fashion and lifestyle magazine alive.

Accustomed to publishing 10 times annually, the 14-year-old magazine has produced only three issues this year and revenues for the first six months were down 70 percent compared with the like year-earlier period.

"We are talking to several publishers about the possibility of jointly publishing the magazine...which we consider a positive, not a negative," said Ed Stein, president of Detour Media and a major shareholder in the company.

"We need to have additional capital or we need to seek a bigger partner in order to implement all the things we're trying to do, which is not unusual for a small company," he added. "That's a good way to do business and we're no different than anybody else in doing that."

Though Stein is adamant that Detour will continue publishing, a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Aug. 29 presented a bleaker outlook.

"In the event all current discussions terminate without additional capital, we will have to enter a joint publishing arrangement with other magazine publishers or liquidate," Detour Media stated in its filing.

Since March, investors have filed to sell off nearly 1 million shares and the company's stock has been at less than $1 per share for more than a year. Detour President and Chief Executive Andrew Left resigned on Aug. 22, while former publisher Barbara Zawlocki left he magazine in April.

Luis Barajas, who co-founded Detour with partner Jim Turner, said Stein helped increase Detour's profits in the mid 1990s but took on too many projects and paid little attention to the magazine.

"Ed told me that no matter what, the magazine would continue to survive because we've done such a branding. I continue to disagree," he said. "I would never go into business with Stein again, ever."

Stein did not return calls for additional comment.

Barajas said he left Detour in 1998 because he had creative differences with Stein and took many of the magazine's core staff members with him. Later that year, he and partner Jim Turner founded a competing L.A. magazine, Flaunt.

In the past two years, Detour has undergone major changes and made several efforts to expand, including forming a custom publishing division and two Web sites.

Zawlocki said she was owed back pay and commission and has filed a lawsuit against the company but declined to say how much she is allegedly owed.

Vendors have also filed lawsuits against the magazine.

Adding to Detour's woes is a decline in ad sales that has hurt all media companies and may have hit magazines harder than others.