Wigwag (magazine)

Founded by Alexander "Lex" Kaplen, who worked at The New Yorker, Wigwag eschewed celebrity coverage in favor of personal and literary writing.The magazine attracted writers such as Peter Matthiessen, Terry McMillan, Garry Wills, Alex Heard, Sousa Jamba and Nancy Franklin, but despite a circulation of 120,000, and despite being financially successful, ceased publication when the Gulf War broke out in 1991 and the economy entered a recession.Once launched, it quickly became a success d'estime, and critics often called it the "Anti-Spy" – in reference to the funny, cruel and cynical New York magazine of that name.Notable staffers at Wigwag include Nancy Holyoke, who went on (with the help of Harriet Brown, another Wigwag editor, now a professor at the S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications) to found American Girl magazine at Pleasant Company in Wisconsin, Caroline Fraser, the author of a noted history of the Christian Science Church, and Evan Cornog, former dean of The Lawrence Herbert School of Communication at Hofstra University.have observed that Wigwag's editorial and design innovations under Kaplen and Davis were later adopted by Tina Brown and implemented at The New Yorker when she became its editor.