THE deadline has passed for buyouts at Time Inc. – and nearly 300 have stampeded for the exits.
All in all, 535 people at least 50 years old and with 15 years of service under their belts were offered the chance to retire early.
That means 55 percent took the money and ran.
The dash for the doors has been nicknamed “Logan’s Run” after Time Inc. CEO Don Logan, who is under enormous pressure to deliver double-digit profit growth to his corporate keepers at AOL Time Warner – the world’s largest media company.
That exodus means there are 2.3 percent fewer people in the 13,000 person Time Inc., magazine division, which includes flagship People as well as Sports Illustrated, Time, Fortune and Money. Time Inc. also includes Time Life Inc., a music and video direct mail operation in Alexandria, Va., and the Southern Progress subsidiary in Birmingham, Ala., which publishes Southern Living and Health.
The early retirement deals have not done much to boost the sagging morale inside the company of those left behind. “They want to turn it into a young and cheap company,” said one insider. “It used to be that Time was one of the places you worked all your career to reach. Now they have 25-year-olds turning out cover stories.”
Some magazines appear to have been harder-hit than others. At People, about 14 of the 18 eligible opted for the package.
The early retirement packages with pensions are separate and apart from the buyout packages – where you take some severance pay and scram – and the outright firings – where you take even less severance pay and are shown the door. And there are no assurances that the cutbacks are over.
In fact, Alan Mirabella, an assistant managing editor at Money and a former top editor at the Daily News, is back on the loose again. He exited two weeks ago – right about the time the early retirement packages were being finalized.
*
Chuck Zito has been to Hell and back. Now, the former president of the New York chapter of Hell’s Angels who once did time in prison on a drug rap and ended up playing a prisoner on TV series “Oz” – will get a chance to write all about it – and pocket an estimated $250,000 for his memoir from St. Martin’s Press.
His hard times may be over but not his hard living. In his storied career he’s been retained as a bodyguard for a string of high powered celebrities including Michael Jackson, Sylvester Stallone, Elizabeth Taylor, Pam Anderson, and Sean Penn.
In the gritty HBO prison drama “Oz,” Zito plays prisoner Chucky Pancamo, who is head of a gang of Italian-American inmates.
Zito’s just re-upped in that role with a multi-year contract.
Next year, he is slated to break out with a starring role in his own talk show, “Street Justice.”
And, coincidentally, that is the title of the memoir which his agent, Frank Weiman at The Literary Group, just sold to St. Martin’s Press Senior Editor Michael Denneny.
“It will be out in spring 2003,” said Denneny. Joe Layden will be the co-author.
Zito, who did stunt work in the flick “Body Double,” mixed it up in a nightclub brawl at Scores several years ago with Jean-Claude van Damme.
The book is expected to be one of the leaders for St. Martin’s spring list. Denneny said he expects a 100,000 copy first printing.
*
Two key editors have jumped ship from the floundering tech title The Industry Standard, amid new reports that parent company Standard Media, majority owned by billionaire Patrick McGovern’s International Data Group, has formally decided to “explore strategic options.” That usually means the magazine is for sale. Sources say the board has voted to retain Allen & Co. and that Nancy Peretsman is handling the deal.
So, it is no surprise that two executive editors, Bob Cohn and Thomas Goetz, have decided to jump ship and hook up with rival Wired at Conde Nast.
Cohn, a one-time Washington editor of Newsweek, will be the executive editor and effectively serve as the No. 2 to new Wired Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson. “He’ll have broad oversight over the entire book,” Anderson told Media Ink.
* Please send e-mail to: