Milwaukee Magazine rips off MKE?

The upside of ripping off a defunct publication is that nobody is supposed to care. But that apparently didn’t work for Milwaukee Magazine, whose latest cover on local fish fries (yawn) bears a striking resemblance to an MKE cover from two years ago. And by striking resemblance, we mean “pretty much exactly the same.”

Unfortunately for Milwaukee Magazine, there are still ex-MKE staffers lurking about town more than six months since the Journal Sentinel-owned weekly pulled up stakes last July, including designer Tuc Krueger, who posted the covers side by side on his Facebook page.

“My first reaction to the magazine rip-off was the shocking lack of creativity, especially seeing as I know the photographer, who's really great,” Krueger told Decider. “I would have at least liked to have seen it re-shot, seeing as this was already a cover.”

Milwaukee Magazine editor Bruce Murphy is pleading ignorance on this one, claiming the freelance photographer in question didn’t inform him of the previous MKE assignment. While it's not the same photo—the plate is diamond-shaped on the MKE cover, and circular for Milwaukee Magazine—Murphy acknowledges that it’s “clearly” the same concept. “We hadn't seen the MKE cover,” he said in an email. “If the photographer had disclosed this—which, needless to say, is the standard expectation for freelance photographers—we would have gone in a different direction with our cover.” Let’s look on the bright side: At least the doors have finally been blown off the city’s previously under-reported fish fry craze. Now, will somebody finally get around to writing about beer?

UPDATE: Milwaukee Magazine issues a response on its website.