Maer Roshan is an Iranian-American editor, writer and entrepreneur who has founded and edited a series of prominent American magazines and websites.
He began his media career in 1989 after graduating from NYU as a crime reporter at the Key West Citizen and launched his first magazine, the gay weekly QW in 1991, at the height of the AIDS crisis, recruiting a prominent group of writers and editors including Andrew Solomon and David Rakoff.
The magazine's coverage of politics and culture earned it a General Excellence Award from the Alternative Press Association.
In January 2002 afterTalk suspended publication, Roshan gathered aides from New York and Talk and started Radar an irreverent monthly about politics and pop culture.
[citation needed] Hailed by The New York Times as the year's most anticipated launch, Radar's first two test issues sold out across the country.
[6] Fourteen months later Roshan raised a reported $10 million from businessmen Mort Zuckerman and Jeffrey Epstein, and secured further backing from Integrity Multimedia, a company funded by billionaire Ron Burkle.
[7] After attracting 1.5 million unique visitors a month after its debut, Radaronline was cited by The Wall Street Journal as a new model for print magazines struggling to adapt to a new media environment.