Was Cargo too gay?

When Cargo--Conde Nast's glossy "magalog" for men--folded in March after two years of hype (its March 2004 debut boasted the most ad pages for a men's magazine launch ever), some media pundits speculated that the publication might have been too gay. After all, gay editor in chief Ariel Foxman reportedly resisted proposed redesigns that would have made the magazine look more like lad mags. and the conventional wisdom posited that straight men just don't care about shopping--at least not enough to sustain a magazine whose content was simply the presentation of products for purchase,

But, said Simon Dumenco, Media Guy columnist for Advertising Age, "saying that Cargo was 'too gay' presumes that it had legions of fans among gay men. it wasn't a must-read or a must-skim for any gay man I know." instead, the reason Cargo failed is that it "never quite knew what it was," Dumenco argued. "One month there'd be a male model on the cover, the next month nothing but typography, the next month a male celebrity, the next month a busty, Maximish babe. Readers just didn't know what to make of it."