Born in Manhattan, Bob Guccione, Jr., was raised in London and New Jersey and now lives in Brooklyn, New York. Bob began his career at the age of 18 in the UK, where he published A Step By Step Guide To Kung Fu, becoming Britain's youngest ever publisher at the time. A year later he returned to America and launched the monthly music magazine, Rock Superstars, making him America's then youngest ever publisher.
In 1985, Guccione launched SPIN, the enormously successful music magazine that usurped Rolling Stone as the dominant pop culture publication for 18-24 year olds. Under Guccione's direction as Editor and Publisher, SPIN developed a reputation for award-winning investigative journalism and was Advertising Age's Magazine of the Year in 1994.
Notable SPIN features included exposés of Live Aid's tragic missteps in Ethiopia, the Atlanta child murders cover-up, the first article on Crack cocaine, and, from 1987 to 1997, a very controversial but internationally lauded monthly column devoted to AIDS. In 1997 Guccione sold SPIN, and in 1998 launched GEAR, a critically-acclaimed young men's pop culture, fashion and politics magazine, which reached a circulation of 500,000 before ceasing publication in 2003.
In October 2005, Guccione completed the acquisition of science magazine DISCOVER from Disney and formed Discover Media LLC. Covering the frontiers of science, technology, medicine and the future, the magazine has a paid circulation of over 700,000 copies monthly.
Additionally, Bob Guccione, Jr. has been a lecturer and debater at Universities in this country and at media conferences in the US, Europe and Dubai, and a regular guest on television talk shows. In the early 1990s he was a frequent host of CNBC's Talk Live, and has often been an Op Ed contributor to the Los Angeles Times, Billboard and other U.S. newspapers. In September 2008 he was Guest Editor of Media, a trade magazine for the advertising and communications industry.
Guccione has an international reputation and a name recognition few have in the media industry.
