Cracked.com

Cracked

URL	http://www.cracked.com
Slogan	America's Only Humor Site Since 1958
Type of site	Entertainment website
Owner	Demand Media
Launched	2007
Current status	Active

Cracked.com is a humor website that was spun off the last attempt to revive Cracked magazine. It began in its current form in 2007.

Attempted relaunch of Cracked

In early 2005, then Cracked owner Dick Kulpa sold the magazine to a group of Arab, Asian, and American investors who announced plans to revive Cracked with a new editorial focus and redesign.^[1] Its first steps included naming entrepreneur Monty Sarhan as both CEO and publisher. Sarhan also announced ambitious plans to expand the Cracked brand into other media.

A flurry of new staff announcements followed, including former Marvel Comics promotions chief Sven Larsen as associate publisher, and Justin Droms and former Marvel editor-in-chief Tom DeFalco as editors. Hollywood producer Thom Mount joined the company's board of directors, and Zena Tsarfin, former managing editor of the hip-hop magazine XXL, was named to that position at Cracked. Named as contributing editors were comics Darren Kane and Jesse Falcon, former Spy staffer Jonathan Yevin, and former Cracked Editor-in-Chief Mort Todd. Michael Hobson, the former publisher of Marvel Comics and Scholastic Books, was named a senior advisor, and Neal Pollack was named an "Editor-at-Large."^[2] In 2005, Geoff Wolinetz, Nick Jezarian and Josh Abraham, co-founders of a "literary whimsicality" site, YankeePotRoast.org, were named as contributing editors, and Jack O'Brien and former National Lampoon managing editor Jay Pinkerton joined as full-time editors. In 2006, actor-comedian Michael Ian Black was also named as another "Editor-at-Large."

Todd vs. Sarhan

Several months after rejoining Cracked, Todd parted company with the revamped magazine, complaining to The Comics Journal about low pay rates and work-for-hire issues of copyright. Todd complained, "With each visit to the offices I got more dispirited as I saw the direction the magazine was taking. As has been well publicized, Cracked was, instead of ripping off MAD, going to rip off Maxim... A lot of 'revolutionary' humor ideas they've come up with are ones that have been overplayed for decades and ones I rejected for good reason 20 years ago [as Cracked's editor]".^[3]

Sarhan wrote in part:

“

My impression of Mort was that he was stuck in a time warp, wanted to relive his personal 'glory days' when he edited Cracked and didn’t get what we were trying to do.... A Contributing Editor is a freelancer with whom we have a relationship with [sic]. That is all that the title means here at Cracked. He's a person who is a regular contributor to the magazine, but he is not on staff.... Mort decided to quit as a Contributing Editor because, he said, he had a few TV projects in development. My personal opinion is that he was stuck in the Cracked of the past and that he didn't like being a freelancer, answering to editors far younger than him here at Cracked and having his ideas regularly rejected. If your work isn't going to get published, it makes no sense to stay.... Anyone who has spent five minutes on this website knows that we are not a Maxim clone. It's a ridiculous assertion. We focus on comedy and humor, not women in bikinis. Yes, it's true that we look to Maxim as a guide for some things. After all, since it's [sic] launch over eight years ago, it has gone on to become one of the most successful magazine titles ever. Who wouldn't want to emulate that success?[4]

”

Relaunch

The company spent most of 2005 accumulating contributors for its planned relaunch. In October 2005, the company introduced Cracked.com, a website featuring humor articles, videos, comics, blogs, and a forum.^[5] Although the redesigned print magazine had originally been slated to debut in January 2006, this did not occur and the print version's launch was pushed back by several months.

On August 15, 2006, the revamped Cracked Magazine finally appeared. The first issue was a significant departure from Cracked's previous incarnation, notably in its sharp reduction of comics and illustrated content. The new format was more text-heavy, and was overtly indebted to modern "lad mags" like Maxim, Stuff and FHM, although the media website Gawker.com wrote, "Very little remains of the old Cracked – a Mad ripoff that had tread water in various incarnations for almost half a century. Much was made of the new direction now ripping off Maxim instead, but aside from a "look and feel" resemblance in terms of layout, the much more obvious (attempted) homage runs to Spy."^[6]

The Washington Post 's Peter Carlson harshly reviewed the debut, listing some of the issue's contents and then adding, "Are you chuckling yet? Me neither." ^[7] Later, Carlson quoted Cracked's Michael J. Nelson, who'd contributed a short guide to the worst comedy movies ever. Wrote Nelson in his article, "Bad comedies are worse than anything else in the whole of human history." Added Carlson, "Reading Cracked, you understand exactly what he means." ^[7]

The new Cracked had hoped to position itself as a publication that covers the world of comedy, as well as providing its own comedic content. The debut cover featured a Photoshop-manipulated image of actor Tom Cruise as the title character from the hit comedy film The 40-Year-Old Virgin.

However, after just three poor-selling issues, the failing magazine was canceled in February 2007.^[8] Citing distribution problems for its demise, editor Jay Pinkerton claimed that the remaining staff would be focusing its energies toward the Cracked website, as well as unspecified book projects. The company's website, Cracked.com, continues.

Rebirth as Cracked.com

The Cracked.com site was purchased by Demand Media in June 2007^[9] and has been edited by Jack O'Brien since its debut in 2006. David Wong was added as an associate editor later that year; his Pointless Waste Of Time site and its fora were absorbed into Cracked.com. Oren Katzeff became Cracked.com's General Manager in November, 2007. The Cracked site is best known for its humorous lists and compilations, for example, "The 9 Most Obnoxious Memes to Ever Escape the Web",^[10] or "The 6 Most Insane Game Shows From Around the World".^[11] The Cracked site also includes a blog, videos, forums, a writer's workshop, a weekly Image Manipulation contest, called photoplasty, and a daily "Craptions" contest where users add captions to odd photographs. The site includes columns by Sean "Seanbaby" Reiley, Daniel O'Brien, Robert Brockway, Cody Johnston, Soren Bowie, Chris Bucholz, host and writer of the web series "Hate By Numbers" Gladstone, John Cheese, Christina Hsu, and head writer and performer of the sketch comedy group "Those Aren't Muskets!" Michael Swaim. Cracked.com is frequently included on eBizMBA's calculated list of the Internet's "20 Most Popular Funny Sites. In 2010, the web series "Agents of Cracked" featuring O'Brien and Swaim won the Audience Choice Award at the second annual Streamys.

Cracked.com released its first book, You Might Be A Zombie And Other Bad News, in 2010.^[12] Published by the Penguin Group's Plume division, the book features twenty articles that had previously appeared on the website^{[citation needed]}, and eighteen that are new to the book. It peaked at #9 on the New York Times' secondary "Paperback Advice & Misc." best sellers list in January 2011.^[13]

References

1. ^ "Newswatch: Cracked Purchased by Mideast Group," The Comics Journal #267 (Apr./May 2005), p. 45.
2. ^ "Newswatch: Pollack on Board at Cracked," The Comics Journal #271 (Oct. 2005), p. 46.
3. ^ "Newswatch: Cracked Launches Website, sans Todd," The Comics Journal #272 (Nov. 2005), p. 37-38.
4. ^ "Statement on the Departure of Mort Todd". http://www.cracked.com/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewtopic&p=284. ^{[dead link]}
5. ^ "Mike Durrett: Online content". http://humor.about.com/od/ezines/a/cracked.htm. 
6. ^ Cracked: Cracked at Last
7. ^ ^{a b} Carlson, Peter (2006-08-29). "Fractured Funny Bone". The Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/28/AR2006082801452.html. Retrieved 2010-04-30. 
8. ^ The Apiary: Cracked Magazine Crumbles
9. ^ http://www.demandmedia.com/brands/cracked/
10. ^ Knight, David. "The 9 Most Obnoxious Memes to Ever Escape the Web" Cracked.com; May 15, 2008
11. ^ Moorehouse, Trevor. "The 6 Most Insane Game Shows From Around the World" Cracked.com; January 11, 2008
12. ^ http://www.cracked.com/you-might-be-a-zombie/
13. ^ Schuessler, Jennifer. "Hardcover". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/best-sellers-books/2011-01-23/paperback-advice/list.html. 

External links

• Cracked website