Florio closes book
AFTER nearly a quarter cen tury inside the glitzy Condé Nast publishing empire, Senior Vice President and Vogue Publications Director Tom Florio is exiting, a move that stunned many insiders.
For the past two weeks, the corridors have been buzzing that “something major” was in the works, but few suspected it was the exit of Florio.
He leaves with no new job, prompting some to speculate that he was being eased out of the group publisher post, which many expect will be eliminated.
Friends, however, say he was growing restless and had been talking about exiting for months.
Most insiders said he was a long shot to move up in the company in the horse race for the CEO job now held by Charles Townsend. With Florio gone, the list of inside candidates is now said to number three, Bob Sauerberg, David Carey and Glamour Publications Director William Wackerman.
Friends say Florio, always seen as a supersalesman in the style of his late brother Steve Florio, is interested in buying or investing in his own company.
Last year, Tom Florio was mulling a move out of publishing to become CEO of a modeling agency, but was persuaded to stay by Townsend, who made him a senior vice president and in addition to Vogue and Teen Vogue, added Bon Appétit and Condé Nast Traveler to his portfolio.
Friends said it did not help when friendly rival Richard “Mad Dog” Beckman quit to go the entrepreneurial route at e5 Global Media. Beckman, once the head of the Condé Nast media group and then Fairchild, joined a group of investors who made him the CEO of a new company that owns The Hollywood Reporter and Billboard.
The company did not issue a formal release announcing his departure, but Townsend did send an internal memo to staffers announcing Florio’s June 30 exit.
His departure also marks the end of the celebrated “Italian Guys” gang that rose to prominence when Steve Florio was at the helm. The group included Tom Florio, the ex-Vogue publisher Ron Galotti, sometimes known as “Mr. Big,” Beckman, an honorary Italian, and a number of other executives from the advertising and media world.
Regarding the whispers that Florio was eased out, one publishing insider who asked to remain anonymous, said, “Who leaves a seven-figure job with nothing else lined up?”
Candace Bushnell, the writer behind the original “Sex and the City,” who had written about her dating experiences with Galotti — identified only as “Mr. Big” — in her mid-90s column in the New York Observer, has just signed a new two-book deal with the Grand Central imprint of Hachette Book Group, said Deb Futter, vice president and editor-in- chief of hardcovers of Grand Central.
The first novel, enti tled, “The Two Mrs. Stones,” is about a love triangle and is slated for publica tion in 2012. Ha chette was the origi nal paperback publisher of the “Sex and the City” book. Bushnell’s latest novel, “The Carrie Diaries,” debuted at No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list. Heather Schroder at ICM was the agent.
Bloomberg Markets just hired Robert Priest, the former creative director of Condé Nast Portfolio, to oversee a major overhaul of the monthly for Bloomberg terminal subscribers, that is due out in the fall.
Since the folding of Portfolio, Priest has gone back to his independent design business.
And while Portfolio is gone, its impact on design lives on. Priest consulted on the redesign of Fortune unveiled earlier this year.
Ever since last December, when Mayor Mike Bloomberg‘s media and information company, Bloomberg L.P. agreed to pay $9.3 million to buy BusinessWeek from McGraw-Hill Companies, Bloomberg Markets has been looked on as a poor relation to its more famous weekly sibling.
Some wondered if Bloomberg Markets might even fold.
Now, in addition to the redesign, Bloomberg L.P. is committing some serious marketing money to bring Bloomberg Markets to the attention of the advertising community.
“This magazine has never been marketed to anyone,” conceded publisher Michael Dukmejian. “Now we’re saying we reach the global financial elites.”
The redesign will appear in the November issue that hits in October.
Although terminal users are still the primary re cipients, he said the magazine is available on newsstands at $5.95 a copy and the thrust will be to en tice more readers to pick it up.
He said he plans to boost the rate base by 50,000 to 355,000 with the November redesign.
The company does not report to the Publishers Information Bureau, but Dukmejian said the title’s ad pages are up 22 percent in the first half of 2010 compared to the first half of 2009.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg’s BusinessWeek was hailing its poaching of Fortune Publisher Hugh Wiley, but it turns out the “raid” on Time Inc. for the 25-year veteran — who has been running ad sales at Fortune for three years — may not have been quite as big a coup as it first appeared.
Turns out Wiley about a month ago had lost his position as the top ad-sales executive at Fortune when Jed Hartman was hired from The Week to be the new group publisher, superceding Wiley’s publisher job.
It now looks more like a game of musical chairs among three magazines, Fortune, BBW (Bloomberg BusinessWeek) and The Week, owned by Felix Dennis.
Jessica Sibley, the former BusinessWeek publisher who stayed after McGraw-Hill sold the mag to Bloomberg LP last year, recently decamped for The Week, as the new publisher. She is taking the job of — you guessed it — Jed Hartman.
Said Time in a statement: “When we brought in Jed Hartman in April we were clearly signaling internally and externally that we were moving in a new direction. We wish Hugh all the best.”
Former McCall’s Editor-in-Chief Sally Koslow is still thriving in the book side of the publishing world.
She just sold her latest effort, a fourth book, “The Wander Years,” to Viking for an estimated six-figure advance. It’s her first non-fiction book — a collection of essays about “adultescents,” technically young men and women who have reached adulthood chronologically, but somehow manage to delay traditional adulthood.
She said that Target just chose the paperback version of her second novel, “The Late, Lamented Molly Marx,” from Ballantine as their new Book Pick. “This feels like being nominated for an Oscar,” said Koslow.
She has not looked back on the magazine world since leaving Gruner + Jahr’s McCall’s — right before it was scrapped and handed over to Rosie O’Donnell and transformed into the ill- fated Rosie magazine.
Tina Gaudoin, the launch editor of WSJ magazine, is stepping down from the job, and packing up and returning to London with her family.
Gaudoin said she is “sad” about the move, but will stay affiliated with the magazine as a contributing editor and will work with Patience Wheatcroft, the editor of the Wall Street Journal European edition on fashion and luxury coverage.
WSJ magazine debuted in Sep tember 2008, but its launch was somewhat decelerated by the Great Recession.
It now runs six times a year. Said Robert Thomson, the Dow Jones editor-in-chief and managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, “While advertising is none of the editorial department’s business, more than 80 new advertisers have been brought into the Journal through WSJ and many of them have advertised online as well as in print.” [email protected]