Off The Record | The New York Observer

Sun's Seeley to Head New, New York–Centric Section at WSJ

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:45:22 -0500

Earlier this year, The Wall Street Journal drafted plans for a New York–only culture section. It didn’t take long for that project to be shelved, and Rupert Murdoch’s Journal decided to take on the city itself—with a New York–only news section that will cover everything you’d expect from a local newspaper: politics, news, sports and, yes, culture.

“They want to do everything,” said one source familiar with the project.

Inside sources...

Selling Magazines, Piece by Piece

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:40:38 -0500

Three former Wall Street investment analysts—Ryan Klenovich, 24, Jian Chai, 26, and Steve DeWald, 24—plan to save the magazine business with a Web site called Maggwire.com.

“We’re going to do for magazines what iTunes did for music,” Mr. Klenovich, the start-up’s chief executive, told The Observer in an interview.

Currently a free aggregator of magazine articles from more than 650 publications, separated into channels like “Politics” and “Entertainment,” Maggwire.com will soon offer...

Times Interactive Team Makes First Female Hire

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:38:00 -0500

The New York Times’ interactive news technologies team has hired a new developer and … it’s a girl! Well, woman, really. Her name is Jacqui Maher and her first day on the job is Nov. 4.

This is the 10-person team’s first and (so far) only female hire.

Software and Web development is a male-dominated field at The Times and everywhere else, editor Aron Pilhofer told The Observer. “It is a serious...

Condé Mags Won't Cut Frequency

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:12:16 -0400

It’s the final week of October, and cuts at Condé Nast are coming to an end. But there’s one last piece of news that Condé Nast insiders have been waiting for: Which magazines will reduce their publishing schedules? Earlier this month, CEO Chuck Townsend told The Observer that four magazines were mulling the option.

For the moment, at least, it appears each monthly has opted to hold steady.

Two insiders told The...

Times Buyout Package Reveals More than Expected

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:09:04 -0400

Just over a week ago, every person in the Times newsroom was sent out a buyout package via UPS Next Day Air. If 100 staffers don’t raise their hands by Dec. 7, there will be layoffs.

We got our hands on one of the thickish brown envelopes that went to employees’ homes. In addition to revealing the actual details of the buyout offer—generally, three weeks pay per year of service and up to two...

More Than Fashionably Late, Conde Nast Hits the Internet

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:34:44 -0400

On Monday, Oct. 26, Daniel Peres, the chummy 38-year-old editor in chief of Details, was standing in his carpeted office on the eighth floor of Condé Nast’s 42nd Street tower, cupping his hands around his eyes and squinting through his wall-size window.

“We were always looking in, you know, watching this party happen,” he told The Observer. “Really attractive people would go in and drunk people would stumble out, and we’d just...

The Si Way

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:58:39 -0400

Just eight years after Si Newhouse spent tens of millions to move Condé Nast into 4 Times Square, he was ready to move out.

In the first week of October 2007, Mr. Newhouse signed a deal with the real estate developer Douglas Durst to build a new tower for his company over a platform on the West Side rail yards at the southeast corner of 33rd Street and 11th Avenue. The...

In New Jersey, Papers Bleed but Survive

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 19:45:59 -0400

One year ago, the Newhouses were threatening to close down their treasured jewel, The Star-Ledger, unless the paper’s union made a series of concessions, which included cutting the newsroom by 40 percent.

They got what they wanted, and it seemed like things could go back to normal, albeit with fewer deckhands on the ship.

Yet on Monday, George Arwady, the publisher of the The Star-Ledger, wrote in a memo to staff that “the...

There's More to Come at Conde Nast, but How Much?

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 19:37:47 -0400

The 180 bodies lost this week at Condé Nast, in the wake of the execution of Gourmet, Cookie and two bridal magazines, comprise the greater part of the damage that we’re going to see out of 4 Times Square, CEO Chuck Townsend told The Observer.

“This was the big news,” said Mr. Townsend. “I don’t think it will be substantially more. It’ll be a trickle.”

But what is meant by “trickle” isn’t totally...

After Print Deaths, Conde Nast Faces Digital Future

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 19:30:01 -0400

When Condé Nast chief executive Chuck Townsend announced the deaths of Gourmet, Cookie, Modern Bride and Elegant Bride, he gave hope to readers and staffers alike that some semblance of the magazines might live online. The changes will “enable us to pursue new ventures,” he wrote in his internal memo. “In the coming weeks, we hope to announce initiatives to develop digital versions of our brands that will make use of new devices and...

William Safire: Better Than Glenn Beck

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 19:34:02 -0400

On Tuesday, we called up a few liberal writers to get their take on former Times columnist William Safire, who died on Sunday at the age of 79. The consensus? Politically distasteful, but a first-rate sparring partner!

“He had a healthy respect for political give-and-take, he loved language and he was a worthy adversary for liberals,” said Eric Alterman, the writer and professor. “It’s because he took the ideas of the other side...

Decision On Times Pay Model Will Come From the Gut

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 19:33:22 -0400

On Wednesday, Sept. 30, Arthur Sulzberger will host his annual “State of The Times” meeting for Times employees, which is generally a sleepy and awkward affair with lots of corporate cheerleading. (Last year, Mr. Sulzberger started the proceedings by playing a slideshow touting all of the paper’s accomplishments with Coldplay’s “Clocks” playing in the background. When the song ended, in lieu of applause, there was a deadly silence.)

But for this year’s meeting, there’s...

Layoffs Will Come to Condé Nast, but When?

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 19:30:01 -0400

Now that those McKinsey-branded packets have been given to nearly every publisher and editor at Condé Nast, when will the inevitable layoffs begin?

It depends on who your boss is.

“The general consensus is, ‘Let’s get it over with,’” said an editorial-side staffer who will have to draw up pink slips at one magazine.

According to this source, that would mean executing layoffs immediately after the 2010 budget is finalized in the...

McKinsey Proffers Pie Graphs: Several Conde Mags to Cut "25-ish Percent"

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 19:56:03 -0400

After a summer of mad speculation at 4 Times Square, Condé Nast editors and publishers are beginning to finally learn what life is going to be like in a post-McKinsey world. In the last few days, Condé Nast executives armed with McKinsey-branded binders have started to deliver budget targets for 2010 to editors and publishers.

The execs told representatives from Details, Traveler and Glamour that they needed to cut their budgets next...

Times Poaches Pulitzer Winner Shadid From Washington Post

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 19:52:38 -0400

Hiring freeze be damned! The New York Times has poached The Washington Post’s celebrated Mideast correspondent, Anthony Shadid.

“I have license to hire when there are extraordinary opportunities or essential jobs we can’t fill from within,” said executive editor Bill Keller to Off the Record in an email. “This meets anyone’s test of an extraordinary opportunity.”

Mr. Shadid told Editor & Publisher’s Joe Strupp, who broke the news of the hire, that he...

The New Yorker Is Hiring

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 20:00:34 -0400

Senior editor Emily Eakin is leaving The New Yorker, and the magazine is looking for a replacement. (Ms. Eakin is leaving due to ongoing medical issues.) The magazine is looking outside the organization to fill the job, and it has received a green light from Condé Nast executives to make the hire, despite the fact that Condé Nast is in the middle of a hiring freeze and in the heart of a budget crunch.

Even...

McKinsey Watch

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 19:57:54 -0400

Over the next week, Condé Nast execs will begin meeting with editors and publishers at 4 Times Square and handing them their 2010 budget targets. It won’t be pretty. McKinsey consultants are expected to be present for these meetings, said
one well-placed source.

Either way, the summer of guessing games for publishers and
editors is about to end.

“Nobody knows anything for now,” said another source. “What is universally known is that everyone is...

Landman to Head Culture at The Times, Happily

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 19:56:13 -0400

"The job was a transitional job, not that I knew that when I took it,” said Jon Landman, the deputy managing editor at The Times, who will soon be leaving behind the lead digital job at nytimes.com to become culture editor at the paper. “It was a stage, a phase in the integration. It had reached the end of its usefulness to have a separate sort of enthusiast for the Web.”

When the...

At Conde Nast, the Last Days of McKinsey

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 19:54:54 -0400

"It's like the first day of school here!” said one Condé Nast staffer, surveying the scene at 4 Times Square on Tuesday afternoon. “Today is quite the fashion show. The building is buzzing. I have to say, everyone looks amazing. I saw this one girl get off on the Teen Vogue floor who was wearing the most killer shoes and was accessorized to death.”

And yet, there’s something in the air this September …

...

After Times Kennedy Leak, Hachette Hires Private Dick

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 19:47:25 -0400

All hell broke loose at the Hachette Book Group building last week when The New York Times published a story detailing some of the most newsworthy bits contained in the late Ted Kennedy’s forthcoming memoir, True Compass. A spokeswoman for the paper said Times reporters had purchased multiple copies of the book at a bookstore the day before, and, much to the chagrin of Twelve publisher Jonathan Karp and his publicity director, Cary Goldstein,...

Tiebreaker! Two Big Bryan Bros. Profiles Duke It Out

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 19:20:30 -0400

This week’s New Yorker (dated Aug. 31) and the Aug. 30 Sunday New York Times Magazine both contain lengthy profiles of professional tennis twins Bob and Mike Bryan.

Sure, the pair has become one of the best men’s doubles teams in the game’s history, with an impressive 54 pro tournament titles. (The record for a men’s doubles team, held by Aussies Mark Woodforde and Todd Woodbridge, is 61.) But haven’t they been around...

Where in the World Is Maer Roshan?

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 19:13:10 -0400

It hardly seems like a year ago, but remember last September? Just after Lehman declared bankruptcy, we dealt with a rapid wave of media closures here in the city: The Sun, 02138 and, for a third time, Radar.

But we didn’t expect that it would take long for Maer Roshan, Radar’s editor, to get up to a new trick. However many times he’d fallen before, he’d also proven, with dogged determination, that year after...

For the Old-Fashioned Sports Columnist, It's Game Over

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 19:58:42 -0400

Sports columnist Harvey Araton packed his pens and notebooks and moved from the sports desk to a features desk, a once proud species ambled closer to extinction.

Two years ago, The Times had five sports columnists. With Mr. Araton gone, there are two. One of them is 70.

There will be no replacements.

The Times’ sports editor, Tom Jolly, explained to The Observer that in many ways, the general-interest sports columnist—at The Times,...

Vogue, Traveler Get Thorough Exams, Courtesy of McKinsey

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 19:51:54 -0400

As McKinsey & Company makes its way through an 11-week tour of Condé Nast, consultants have been taking an early look at Anna Wintour’s Vogue and Klara Glowczewska’s Condé Nast Traveler, The Observer has learned.

Sources tell us that those two magazines have been getting a close examination in order to potentially serve as models for how the company will review—or, in CEO Chuck Townsend’s words, “rethink”—its business. When McKinsey hands out...

Meet Michael Schmidt, the Young Times Writer Who Exposes Baseball's Worst

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 12:48:11 -0400

In the last two months, we've learned that David Ortiz, Sammy Sosa and Manny Ramirez each cheated baseball in some way. They all appeared on "the List," the roster of some 100 baseball players who tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs in 2003. When their names came out—Sosa in June, and Ortiz and Ramirez in late July—the game of baseball looked, if it's even possible, a little worse.

All those names were reported first by The New York Times....

Mathis Speaks! The Times Co.'s Spokeswoman’s Greatest Hits

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 19:29:35 -0400

On Monday, Times Company spokeswoman Catherine Mathis announced that she’d be leaving the company to work at Standard and Poors, the financial analyst. Ms. Mathis was a Company Woman: She protected her bosses, Arthur Sulzberger and Janet Robinson, with all her might and wasn’t the glad-handling PR gossip who hit the circuit to butter up media reporters. In other words, if she wasn’t entirely forthcoming, she was loyal. Half her tenure was during unquestionably...

What the Heck Is A-1 News?

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 19:24:42 -0400

Sometime in the spring, a new news box appeared among those corner stables of free papers, nestled between the arched orange top of Metro, the slanted red metal of amNew York, the plastic hulk of New York Press, and the narrow giraffes that push Local Writing Classes and the Learning Annex. The newcomer was nondescript: a metal box in dark blue, with a plain white square that declared itself—A-1 NEWS—and proclaimed its lofty intention—LARGEST...

Times' Harvey Araton Leaves Sports Desk for New Features Desk

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 07:00:21 -0400

After 15 years on the sports desk at The Times, and some four decades of sports writing, columnist Harvey Araton is switching beats.

Starting today, Mr. Araton will join a newly created group of Times feature writers. Mr. Araton will be writing features for the Sunday real estate section, Sunday Styles, Real Estate, Sunday Business and A1. It’s no surprise that the Times is starting up a group like this—with a de-emphasis on freelancers, the paper...

Mets Mess Moves Reporters to Rally 'Round Rubin

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 19:47:54 -0400

Be sure never to consult the Mets’ book on public relations.

On Monday afternoon, Mets general manager Omar Minaya held a press conference to announce that the director of player development, Tony Bernazard, was being let go. This came days after Daily News Mets beat reporter Adam Rubin broke a story that Mr. Bernazard had taken his shirt off in front of a bunch of minor leaguers and told them to take a swing...

McKinsey Still a Mystery at Conde Nast

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 19:39:54 -0400

In the week-old, McKinsey-fied world, folks at Condé Nast remain jittery.

The consulting firm has already set up shop and will spend the next few weeks working around summer vacations to schedule interviews with editors, managing editors and publishers. Recommendations from the consulting firm are expected to begin in October, a well-placed source said.

But what exactly McKinsey has been hired to do—encourage layoffs? Recommend that Vanity Fair find sponsors for its...

Condé Nast Hires McKinsey, Staffers Suffer Shock

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 18:58:18 -0400

The casual, take-it-as-it-comes attitude that’s prevailed over Condé Nast during the past 10 dark months vanished from the atmosphere somewhere above 4 Times Square this week.

The shift in mood started late Monday afternoon when Condé Nast CEO Chuck Townsend sent out a companywide memo that said, rather coldly, that the consulting firm McKinsey & Company had been hired to help the company “rethink” how it does business. A realignment, he said, would be...

No Sales Bump (Yet) for Redesigned Newsweek

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 14:31:07 -0400

Newsweek underwent a big splashy redesign in late May in the hope that it could turn around the magazine's sagging fortunes, but so far there hasn't been a considerable bump in newsstand sales.

Newsweek sold an average of 66,702 copies off the newsstand in its first six weeks since the redesign versus the 66,533 issues that it averaged for the previous 18 issues in 2009, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations' Rapid Report.

More troubling, in the last...

Wall Street Journal on the Line

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 12:16:06 -0400

On Monday, according to The Wall Street Journal, Barry Sternlicht told investors in his Starwood Capital Group who’d dialed into a teleconference: “We’re bidding on a bank.”

The report cited “people familiar with the matter” as identifying the unnamed bank as Corus Bankshares Inc., but Journal reporters Lingling Wei and Nick Timiraos also quoted from the call without any attribution, or information about where their notes on the call came...

Summer Bummer! Zooey's a No-Show at WSJ Culture Event

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 19:09:39 -0400

In keeping with her fickle, heartbreaking character in the new film (500) Days of Summer, Zooey Deschanel bailed on a date with The Wall Street Journal Monday night. Ms. Deschanel was scheduled to headline a screening and Q&A at the AMC Lincoln Square, as part of The Journal’s inaugural “Summer Scoops Live” series, but just before the film began, culture editor Christopher Farley announced to the sold-out theater that the...

Running on Appy! Times Connects with Marathoners Thanks to Interactive Crew

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 19:00:52 -0400

A couple of months ago, New York Times health writer and “Well” blogger Tara Parker-Pope realized that she wasn’t being very, well, healthy.

“I kind of woke up one day and thought, ‘The biggest problem with the Well blog right now is the Well blogger is not taking care of herself,’” she told The Observer in an interview. Ms. Parker-Pope admitted she had abandoned the gym—at a time when she ...

Wall Street Journal Develops New York–Specific Culture Section

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 20:06:49 -0400

Eighteen months ago, at the Marriott Hotel on West Street in the Financial District, Rupert Murdoch had his first meeting as owner of The Wall Street Journal with the newspaper’s bureau chiefs and senior editors.

Over dinner and cocktails, Mr. Murdoch started beating a drum about things he wanted to add to The Wall Street Journal—a snappier front page, an expanded Web site, a sports section and a beefed-up culture...

Zoom! Yum! New Internet 'Paper' to Cover Jetpacks, International Conflict, Food

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 19:44:10 -0400

Just when you thought the Internet couldn’t get any louder! Tomorrow brings the launch of the Faster Times, “a new type of newspaper for a new type of world.”
Modeled on the Huffington Post, the Faster Times is a combination of original content and aggregated links divided into about 15 sections, including business, politics, arts, food, sports, design and travel. Its staff, led by Faster Times’ founding publisher and...

Times Staffers Get Cut— From Daily Show Segment

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 20:12:37 -0400

Minutes after The Daily Show’s segment on The Times aired last week, some in the Times newsroom voiced their sentiment that correspondent Jason Jones’ “report” went just fine. “That was awesome,” said one staffer to us on the night of the show. “We’re good sports!”

But several hours later, the outside world revealed its own reaction, which was less than favorable. To most viewers, executive editor Bill Keller and assistant managing editor Rick Berke—and communications...

New HuffPo CEO Hippeau Wants to Grow

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 20:06:10 -0400

By many measures, Eric Hippeau, the man who was named the new CEO of the Huffington Post on Monday, just got a dream job. He has a Web site with tiny overhead that has only burned through about $12 million in its first three and a half years online.

And that’s not all. According to the Web site, it has 21 million unique users every month. It’s the most-linked-to blog on the Internet, according...

Murdoch's Monster: The Journal of the Plague Years

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 01:49:58 -0400

"This content hub will be the most powerful generator of news and information anywhere in the world,” said Robert Thomson, the managing editor of The Wall Street Journal.

He was speaking from his offices in the World Financial Center on Liberty Street, for the past 24 years the home of The Journal. But he was talking about 1211 Avenue of Americas, the corporate headquarters of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.

On Friday, The Journal will...

Bringing Up A-Rod

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 19:34:44 -0400

In the days immediately after Alex Rodriguez held a wildly uncomfortable press conference to admit he’d used steroids, the Sports Illustrated reporter responsible for the news, Selena Roberts, noticed a change in the air.

“I think he was a sympathetic figure after that awkward press conference,” said Ms. Roberts. “There’s a turning point with people: They say he’s our guy. For Alex, it was a turning point. I don’t think he’s ever had a...

Newsweek Turns to Tina Tricks: Meet Guest Editor … Stephen Colbert!

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 19:29:23 -0400

In the two weeks since Newsweek has redesigned, the magazine’s editors have sent out a statement that they intend to sever any and all connection to the turgid, dusty newsweekly of yore. And Jon Meacham, the magazine’s editor, is trying to recapture that age-old magazine editor’s trick for his newly conceived book: buzz.

For the next issue that hits newsstands on June 8, Comedy Central funnyman Stephen Colbert will be Newsweek’s guest editor, The...

Busted Author Busted

Tue, 26 May 2009 19:48:36 -0400

When The New York Times Magazine ran an excerpt from Edmund L. Andrews’ memoir, Busted, on May 17, its editors probably felt like they’d hit a perfect combination of a subject (subprime lenders, squeezed homeowners), author (one of the paper’s own writers—an economics expert—was a victim) and zeitgeist (it was packaged as part of the magazine’s ‘Money Issue’ with the perky but accusatory Suze Orman on the cover). Sure enough, the piece was a...

Times Taps Twitter Tsarina!

Tue, 26 May 2009 19:23:52 -0400

In mid-May, The New York Times suffered some social media growing pains when details from an internal meeting about Web strategy were broadcast on several reporters’ Twitter feeds. “We need a zone of trust,” Times executive editor Bill Keller scolded staffers at the time, “where people can say what’s on their minds without fear of having an unscripted remark or a partially baked idea zapped into cyberspace.

“Think of it as common courtesy,”...

Where Is Knox’s Vox? Twittering Ex-New Yorker Writer Dan Baum's Wife, Former Martha Gellhorn, Hides Light Under Bushel

Tue, 19 May 2009 23:15:02 -0400

Literary history is full of women who served as quiet enablers of male talent: Milton’s daughters, who read aloud to their blind father in languages they didn’t understand; Dorothy Wordsworth, who declared, “I should detest the idea of setting myself up as an author,” even as her poet brother borrowed images from her journal; and Elizabeth Hauptmann and Ruth Berlau, Bertolt Brecht’s lovers and unacknowledged collaborators.

“I think when I was young, I thought, ‘Oh...

Bill Keller's Best Frenemy

Tue, 19 May 2009 19:07:34 -0400

"Google is one of those companies that we generally refer to as a frenemy,” said New York Times executive editor Bill Keller at his semi-annual newsroom question-and-answer session, informally called Throw Stuff at Bill.

Google has been a popular whipping boy these days. Last month, Wall Street Journal managing editor Robert Thomson told The Australian that aggregator sites like Google act like “parasites or tech tapeworms.” The argument goes like this: Google draws revenue...

Portfolio.com to Get Lazarus Treatment

Tue, 19 May 2009 19:02:44 -0400

Is Joanne Lipman’s shuttered Condé Nast business magazine, Portfolio, about to come back from the dead? Partially!

American City Business Journals, which is operated by Condé Nast parent company Advance Publications, “has expressed real interest in taking it over,” according to a source.

But the relaunch wouldn’t come out of 4 Times Square: ACBJ is based in Charlotte, N.C. (is Big Business really leaving us for this Southern dame?), though the new...

Mr. Meacham's Magazine

Tue, 12 May 2009 19:54:26 -0400

Jon Meacham, the editor of Newsweek, was pacing in a little corner of the basement of the Hilton Hotel in Washington at 6:02 p.m. on the evening of May 9.

It was two hours before the start of the White House Correspondents Dinner, that annual soggy, boozy, clammy hammerlock between journalists and celebrities that would happen upstairs, and the doors had just opened to Newsweek’s annual pre-dinner cocktail party.

“Where’s Mrs. Weymouth?”...

The Times is Mad as Hell and ... Well?

Tue, 05 May 2009 20:26:50 -0400

The New York Times has a public-relations problem.

Every day there seem to be articles, and endless Web and television chatter, about The Times: The Times might shut down The Globe! The Times lost $75 million in the first quarter!

There’s only $34 million left in cash! The Times will stop printing in May! The Times should stop printing in May!

At the Times Center last week, at a meeting hosted by CEO Janet Robinson, Metro reporter...

At Portfolio, Prehistory Was Prologue

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 20:22:45 -0400

It turned out to be a dreary, rainy day back in 2005 when Joanne Lipman, the superstar editor from The Wall Street Journal, made her way to answer a summons to lunch at Si Newhouse's apartment on the East Side of Manhattan.

A personal invitation from the venerable chairman of Condé Nast was unheard of in Ms. Lipman's world; she was excited.

When she got to his apartment, which is within spitting distance of the United...