Time Inc.’s Ann Moore and exiting Martha Stewart Living chief Susan Lyne are having lunch next week. It’s either to meet about Lyne taking over Moore’s job, or the most excellent prank on media’s chattering classes.
“Most big magazine publishers saw total ad pages decline in the first four months of 2008 compared to the same period last year […] While some losses can be attributed to the closing of various titles since last year, the broad nature of the declines, cutting across a number of categories, looks ominous for the magazine industry.” CONTINUED »
OBLIGATORY TITLES Former Time Inc. chief and current Carlyle Group hand Norm Pearlstine is heading to Bloomberg LP, where he will assume the role of chief content officer. [Dealbook] Which begs the question: WTF is with these “chief content officers”? Netflix has one; so does PBS; so did the Cartoon Network. Is management not already stuffed with CEOs, COOs, CTOs, CFOs, and CPOs (that one is “chief privacy officer”) that we need to reassign the responsibilities normally spread among top execs to a new high-earning title grabber?
“In the next five years in Graydon Carter’s world, you’ll walk onto a plane, or a subway, or a soon-to-be-invented mode of transport, and you’ll tuck a little electronic book under your arm. Inside that little book, which will be very expensive at first but soon will cost $150, there’ll be a series of mylar “pages,” and there will be small buttons off to the side, and once you hit one of them, whoooosh, words and photos from Vanity Fair will suddenly appear. ‘You’ll subscribe to five magazines and six newspapers,’ Mr. Carter said. ‘That is what I see as the future. … That I know is coming.’ ‘Ultimately, there will be some sort of device!’ said Peter Meirs, the vice president of production technology at Time Inc.” [NYO]
Um, you mean like the $399 Kindle, which already exists? Which is very expensive now but will eventually cost less? That there are small buttons you can push where the words and photos from magazines appear? Where you can already purchase, download, and read Time Inc. titles like Time and Fortune?
Five years is SO far away!
If Time Inc. chief Ann Moore wanted to keep secret her plans to continue trimming the publisher’s portoflio, perhaps she should have removed the “Trim Portfolio” slide from her PowerPoint presentation. With new CEO Jeff Bewkes leading a company-wide consolidation effort, the publishing unit is expected to see some fallout, with shelter titles in the most jeopardy. Sorry, both This Old House subscribers, but you might have to rely on the TV show alone.
There are some positives to shutting down a magazine under your own corporate umbrella. For Time Inc. title Fortune, the demise of Business 2.0 was dollar-sign-filled music to Fortune/Money Group chief Vivek Shah. Thanks to the abrupt absence of competition from its corporate cousin, Fortune is cashing in; ad revenue from technology advertisers is up 35 percent.
The Lori Majewski white water rafting ride through the entertainment press continues!
After jumping around from Teen People to People (just kidding!) and then to Entertainment Weekly as executive editor, the wanderlust is bouncing again. Though EW editor Rich Tetzeli doesn’t say so in his email to the masthead (below), we hear Lori is leaving in December and is headed to will involve herself more deeply in Do Something, the teen-focused organization that’s all about changing the world and, um, doing stuff. “She misses working with teens,” says one Time Inc. insider. Perhaps she’s the next Atoosa Rubenstein? For one, we hear she’s got a book deal lined up. But that’ll have to wait until she gets back from her mega-travels.
CONTINUED »
Advertising Age publisher (and AdAge columnist) Scott Donaton is leaving his post as the head of the Crain trade to become … publisher of Entertainment Weekly! Time Inc. Entertainment Group, under newly inducted head Paul Caine, has been searching for a replacement for EW’s founder and publisher David Morris, who gave notice that he was leaving Time Inc. after 21 years. Let the Time regime change memos continue!
CONTINUED »
AOL might be slashing jobs, but Time Inc. is just shoveling the staff around. A memo from Ann Moore follows, which deals with fun terms like “M&A” and “Production and Fulfillment Operations.” Oh, and a little guy named John Squires. CONTINUED »
There’s nothing to announce yet, but Time Warner Inc. may have a new CEO as early as next week.
Richard Parsons, the current chief executive, may hand off the title to Jeffrey Bewkes, president of the company. Bewkes was responsible for changing AOL’s business focus to advertisers, instead of users. That strategy appealed to about six moms in the Midwest.
CONTINUED »
Rick Reilly, allegedly the highest paid writer in history of Time Inc., is set to make even more at ESPN. Once the proud signer of a five-year, $5 million contract, he’s now doubling that at ESPN with a $10 million over five years deal.
Reilly will stay on at Sports Illustrated until December 1. Time Inc. is enforcing its revenge non-competition rule, so Reilly won’t start at ESPN until June 1.
On the deal, Reilly said, “It’s tough leaving SI after 23 years, but I just had this itch I had to scratch,” referring to working on TV.
Now he can scratch that metaphorical itch with a figurative diamond encrusted backscratcher.
Bill Shapiro, who lost his managing editor job at Life when it folded for the sixth or seven-hundredth time, is back on Time Inc.’s payroll. The former chief of Time’s, custom publishing unit, Shapiro is the new development editor for all of Time Inc., according to a memo sent out by editor-in-chief John Huey, who describes Bill as the “primary liaison between editorial and our colleagues in corporate sales and marketing.” That is, he’s your go-to guy when your client needs an editorial plug in the front of the book!
Most fun in Huey’s reintroduction of Bill, however, is the endnote about Bill’s new book, Other People’s Love Letters, which comes out at the end of the month. The book features what appear to be stolen love notes found in attics, basements, and discared cell phones. Staffers will have a chance to celebrate the tome at a party featuring “some Cheetos, Dr. Pepper and an opportunity to buy a copy.”
Emphasis, of course, ours. CONTINUED »
You already know Business 2.0 folded, but don’t you want to know how Time Inc. COO John Squires explained to staffers that they’d rather shutter the magazine than sell the brand or its subscriber list? Yes, yes you do! So find the internal staff memo after the click-y. CONTINUED »
Bloomberg News congratulates Time Warner Inc. CEO Dick Parsons on performing without “a stupendous pay package.” Worth mentioning: Dick Parsons earned $18.3 million in 2006. Also worth mentioning: we officially hate both Bloomberg News and Time Warner Inc. CEO Dick Parsons. [Bloomberg]
A month after reports that Time Inc. execs were considering shutting down Business 2.0 comes official word that the mag will be closing, with many of its staffers heading to Fortune instead. “A benefit of the magazine’s recent purgatory is that most of its laid-off employees now have other jobs lined up,” writes the Times. Or, as one cheeky soon-to-be-former staffer puts it, “One good thing having our carcass dragged through the streets for the last month is that it gave everyone ample time to find something.” [NYT]
In honor of the 2-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Time Inc. sent 12 editors from 10 of its 150 magazines on a 2 day trip to New Orleans.
“I came back thinking that the Katrina story really wasn’t over — and while some people had moved on, the city of New Orleans was still dealing with it in every aspect, environmentally, socially, politically,” said People Group editor, Martha Nelson.
An incensed Nelson then went on to say that she was both outraged and appalled at Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff’s mishandling of the situation, before returning home, hopping into her nice warm bed, and promptly forgetting all about it.
[NY Times]
Is Time Inc. shuttering Business 2.0? They were, for a hot minute. After the September issue shipped on Friday, most expected the title to fold for good. (Ad page problems and all.)
Staffers had been printing off resumes; columnists were told not to bother for October; Time Inc. brass were planning a California getaway to get hot stone massages and rip the framed covers of the magazine off the walls before locking the front door for good.
And then, in an about-face, staffers have been asked back to work on an October issue — while Time Inc. shuffles papers about potential suitors, who could scoop up the magazine for a wad of cash and set Time Inc. free from the troubles of publishing a business magazine when, we’re told, business is red hot these days.
• During the Bancrofts’ “not acrimonious at all” discussion regarding the potential sale of the Dow Jones corporation, “Christopher Bancroft entered the hotel wearing a ‘Bite Me’ fishing cap.” Touché.
• WSJ vet leaves paper after 22 years to join Portfolio, avoid working for Rupert Murdoch.
• Gossipy Hamptons rag Dan’s papers sold for enough money to buy a “pretty nice” house on Amagansett Lane.
• Wenner Media and Time Inc. promoted a bunch of lowly staffers who you’ve probably never heard of.
• In desperate post-Sopranos haze, HBO greenlights new episodes of Unsolved Mysteries.
• Is YouTube destined to become the new Friendster and fade into “I Love The 00’s” obscurity?
• Advertisers already starting to back away from Portfolio on the basis that it’s boring and reads like “Business for Dummies.”
• Joe Scarborough and his cronies “jokingly” ripped the producers’ Paris Hilton script into pieces, pretended to light it on fire, then stuck it in the paper shredder. It’s called journalism, people.
“Ummm, no,” is pretty much how we can best accurate sum up the New York Guild’s 133-0 vote on Time Inc.’s latest “concessions.” The memo, which features bullet-pointed prose, post-jump. CONTINUED »
Editorial Director
