Special interest mag a prince of a curiosity

The odd special interest publication from American Media Inc. that hit stands earlier this month appears to be a giant advertorial extolling the virtues of Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — and it’s raising eyebrows across the industry.

Its headlines credit the prince with “Transforming the World at 32” and being “Our Closest Middle East Ally Destroying Terrorism.”

There is no mention of the prince’s recent detention without trial of other royals, Saudi Arabia’s role as the birthplace of many of the 9/11 hijackers, or the country’s history of general human rights violations, especially when it comes to women’s rights.

The Daily Beast on Tuesday called it a “Saudi propaganda magazine.” It’s being placed in supermarkets by AMI Chief Executive David Pecker, an admirer of President Trump.

A possible explanation: Pecker pushed his finances to the limits last year in the deals to acquire Us Weekly and Men’s Journal from Wenner Media and is trying to entice the Saudi royal to invest. One media observer said Pecker was chagrined when the Saudi sovereign wealth fund recently invested $200 million in Jay Penske’s Penske Media.

Others speculate that the special interest AMI publication is part of a big year- end strategy to pump out as many issues as possible to hit newsstands by the end of the fiscal year on March 31.

“The revenue can be estimated and count in the current fiscal year, and then ‘adjusted’ down the road if it falls short,” said one media executive.

The mag is ad-free with a $13.99 cover price and nearly 100 pages. It carries no cover notation that it is produced by the same company that owns the National Enquirer.

A spokesman for AMI insisted that it did not send the material for pre-approval to anyone, and that AMI is not courting the Saudi prince as an investor.

“It’s opportunistic,” said the spokesman. “They realized there was a lot of news coverage around the trip.” (The prince met with Trump last week and is on a US tour.)

The Saudi issue is just one of 52 SIP’s planned for 2018, the spokesman said.