The Media Equation: Print’s Poetry Still a Draw for the Publisher Felix Dennis

Felix Dennis, the British magazine publisher, took America by storm in the 1990s with Maxim, a bawdy men’s magazine with models whose garments always seemed on the precipice of falling off. The formula was so successful, he also started Stuff, a little brother brand, and Blender, a music magazine.

In 2007, Mr. Dennis sold the magazines to Alpha Media, backed by Quadrangle Capital Partners II, a private equity firm, for $250 million. The bottom dropped out of the category, Stuff was folded into Maxim, Blender ceased publication, Maxim hemorrhaged ads and employees and its owners defaulted on their loans.

Mr. Dennis, who built and sold computer magazines in America when the category was hot, had done it again. After selling Maxim, he repaired to England with a big bag of loot, though he did hang on to The Week, a low-cost print aggregation of news done by others, which has outlasted the print version of Newsweek. In 2011, he also bought Mental Floss, a smarty pants magazine and Web site aimed at a young, connected demographic.

Mr. Dennis, who has invested aggressively in digital operations in Britain and elsewhere, is intent on proving there is still life left in print. With a keen understanding of readers and a deft touch for timing, he’s proud that he’s still able “to be a nuisance to the rest of the business.”

“I have sold at the top of market several times,” he cackled. “Nobody remembers how long I’ve been at this. I love the media game. Love. It.”

He also happens to be a best-selling poet in his native England. In a documentary, “Felix Dennis: Millionaire Poet,” that is out right now, Tom Wolfe is seen reading three of his poems. A ruffler of feathers and professed “bearded dwarf,” Mr. Dennis knows his way around a quip and tends to dole them out at a very high frequency.

He was once invited to give the annual Delacorte Lecture to the students at Columbia Journalism School and advised them to ignore advertisers — they are merely “guests” — and focus on readers. “They are my bread, my butter, my caviar and my Gulfstream jet. Actually, I always rent the private jets. My rule is, if it flies, floats or fornicates, rent it. It’s cheaper in the long run.”

But he is oddly chaste about the death of the print version of Newsweek, a magazine which he had constantly slagged as a bloated, beside-the-point publication.

“I have always been a fan of Tina,” he said, referring to Tina Brown, the editor, “and thought she brought a sense of fun to magazines, but there was no way that was ever going to work out. It had huge costs at a time the economics would not support it.”

He added: “You’ll get no triumphalism from me. I was a subscriber, believe it or not, and it’s never good when a magazine goes away.”

Even though he believes that American magazines are overedited and overstaffed — “No one else in the world takes so many people to make magazines” — Mr. Dennis says that there is nonetheless a lot of life left in printed products here. “No woman or girl is going to want to spend time looking at pretty dresses on the Internet,” he said. “Vogue is going to be around for a long time to come.”

Mr. Dennis, 65, got his start selling magazines on Kings Road in London and worked his way over to the editorial side at Oz magazine, where he quickly ran afoul of British obscenity laws and was charged with “conspiracy to corrupt public morals.” The verdict against him and his co-defendants — they were convicted of two lesser charges — was eventually overturned.

He then got in early on the computer craze with a raft of hobby magazines, although to this day he does not use e-mail and carries no cellphone.