Westword‘s Michael Roberts has the skinny on Bias, a new magazine now being developed under the auspices of the Denver Newspaper Agency, the good folks who own the family-friendly Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News.

Among the first items in a sample issue of Bias magazine that’s been shown to potential [advertising] clients in recent months is “Drink to the Lost,” a feature urging readers to “Find your luck in living with this fun murder map!” An accompanying street guide of downtown Denver spotlights locales where prominent slayings took place, along with toasts to the victims. Guzzlers are encouraged to laud assassinated talk-show host Alan Berg with this remark: “If we’re all to be mowed down for the shit we talk, then the devil’s got a full clip for each of us.” The salute to Li’l Bit, a diminutive, crack-addled prostitute who was offed in 1994, overflows with even more mock profundity: “Let it be said that you were a hooker. Yet we all serve that which we abhor. Let it be said that you were a midget, or a dwarf. Yet we all stand small next to death.”

Awesome, dudes, but not as self-consciously scandalous as a line promising that Bias “will help you carve up your market like Jeff Dahmer at a Rohypnol party.”

Wow. And to think that only last year I was publicly complaining about the DNA’s plans to exploit its government-sanctioned monopoly by getting into the magazine biz.

Guys, I take it all back. If this is really how you think you can shore up your sagging circulation, who am I to stand in your way? Full speed ahead, gentlemen. Pretty please?

Daniel Brogan
Daniel Brogan
Daniel Brogan is the founder, CEO, and Editor-in-Chief of 5280 Publishing, Inc.