Top editors out at Maxim as magazine’s identity struggles

There’s been yet another shakeup at embattled lad mag Maxim — two top editors have left because of a standoff with management, Page Six has exclusively learned.

We’re told that executive editor Mitch Moxley and a senior photo editor — who worked on the magazine’s celebrity shoots — have exited the men’s magazine because of a blowup with its controversial owner and editor in chief, Sardar Biglari.

The publication’s been struggling to find its feet since owner Biglari took over in 2014.

First there was a short-lived experiment with turning the magazine — once a frat-tastic bonanza of bikini shoots and bad taste — into a lifestyle publication, with Biglari appointing its first female editor, Kate Lanphear, in September 2014.

That experiment lasted just a year, and Lanphear — who had previously worked for Elle and T Magazine — shipped out in November 2015, when Biglari took over as editor in chief himself.

There followed an uncertain period with a raft of media heavyweights playing roles at the struggling title.

Interview and GQ alum Glenn O’Brien joined as editor at large in 2015, and star photographer Gilles Bensimon began serving as special creative director in January 2016. (O’Brien, who passed away last year, said he would have “all the authority” of Lamphear, but was being called editor at large because “I can’t take that kind of pressure.”)

Moxley joined shortly after in 2016, but Biglari — chairman and CEO of Biglari Holdings, which owns the Steak ’n Shake and Western Sizzlin chains — has yet to steady the ship.

As The Post reported in 2015, Victoria’s Secret model Alessandra Ambrosio was furious after the magazine published a photograph of her with Biglari that she had “reluctantly” taken, insisting it was not to appear in the magazine. Curiously, she was subsequently named as the magazine’s special lifestyle editor in 2016.

Moxley and Maxim reps didn’t get back to us.

Source: Read Full Article