EMBATTLED home entertainment diva Martha Stewart beat a hasty retreat from the annual magazine pow-wow in Phoenix yesterday.
She bolted just after the latest twist over her involvement in the ImClone insider trading scandal put her back on front pages nationwide.
The news: The SEC some weeks back had hit her with a Wells notification, which means it plans to file a civil suit against her in the near future.
“I saw her leaving right around 8 a.m.,” said one attendee Tuesday morning at the posh Arizona Biltmore, where most of the giants of the magazine industry had been encamped for the past two days.
That eyewitness refuted at least one report that Stewart had bolted Monday night.
In fact, on Monday, even as her legal woes were mounting, Martha was putting on the Ritz. She dined at the nearby Ritz-Carlton with Ann Moore, CEO of Time Inc.; William Kerr, the chairman and CEO of Meredith Corp.; and Thomas Rogers, the CEO of Primedia, at a dinner staged by investment bankers John Veronis and John Suhler.
And the talk around the table of media heavyweights never turned to the stock scandal, said Moore. “We talked about magazines. I love her magazine,” said Moore, “I didn’t ask her why she was leaving early.”
Said another conference attendee, “I thought [Stewart] was amazingly composed. I think she deserves a lot of credit just for showing up.”
But her departure yesterday morning was so sudden that even the hotel did not know she was gone.
Calls were still being put through to her room, and at one point the concierge attempted to deliver a dozen roses to Martha’s room – only to find when he arrived that the room was empty.
After some calls, he found that Stewart had indeed left the building.
Up to that point, Martha had been doing her best to conduct business as usual among her colleagues, rivals and peers in the magazine world.
She donned black leather pants and a shocking pink top at the opening reception on Sunday night.
On Monday, she made a side trip to drop in on KTVK Channel 3 in Phoenix, which runs her syndicated show, but then made it back to catch Newsweek scribe Jonathan Alter’s luncheon address.
She left early, and some wondered it if was because of the brewing bad news.
But she may have had another reason. “I spilled iced tea and water on her,” confessed Randy Jones, head of Worth magazine and her Monday luncheon companion.
By late Monday afternoon, she was back lounging around the pool with Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia president Sharon Patrick.
They were looking at the new issue of Forbes, which named MSO one of the best-run small companies in America.
Of course, that was before the latest allegations from the SEC hit, raising a whole host of unanswered questions about when Martha received the Wells notification and why stockholders weren’t informed.
So far, most publishing executives are rallying around their embattled colleagues.
Aside from Martha, there was trouble for Dan Brewster, the reigning chairman of the Magazine Publishers of America.
Brewster, whose day job is running Gruner + Jahr USA, learned that comedian Rosie O’Donnell had filed a $125 million countersuit against him and the company. Earlier, after O’Donnell walked away from the Rosie magazine, G + J had hit her with a $100 million breach-of-contract suit.
Nonetheless, Brewster was reelected to another one-year term as MPA chairman – and Martha was reelected to another three-year term as a board member.
Nobody at the AMC seemed to think the turmoil the two board members are encountering should force them to step down from the MPA slots.
“I haven’t even heard a whiff of that,” said Rick Smith, the chairman of Newsweek. “I think Dan is doing a terrific job as chairman.
Jack Kliger, CEO of Hachette Filipacchi Media – publisher of Elle, Car and Driver and Woman’s Day, among others – said of the legal squabbles, “I don’t see those as reasons they should not continue to do what they are doing for the MPA.
“Dan has done a terrific job,” he added. “If Martha loses the SEC suit, at that point there may be other considerations.”
Thomas Ryder, the chairman of the Readers Digest Association, was ringing in his defense of Stewart. “I don’t know what she did or didn’t do, but what we are seeing played out here is a public vilification. It feels like a government vendetta.”
And asked if Brewster’s legal battles would distract him enough to the point where he might have to step down, Ryder said, “Oh, please – any CEO who is not in the middle of a lawsuit hasn’t been working hard enough.”
Said Kim MacLeod, an investment banker at DeSilva & Phillips, “There’s a part of me that thinks what is happening is a witch hunt. I still haven’t sold the stock. I think it’s a good company.”