Bloomberg mag cover is, uh, hard to ignore
The new cover of Bloomberg Business Week created quite a stir yesterday on Wall Street and beyond with its phallic cover calling out hedge funds as overrated.
One p.r. pro said she thought the cover was trying too hard to get attention.
“New @BW cover or Viagra ad?” asked one Twitter follower, Lance Garrison.
But others seemed highly bemused.
“Instant classic,” tweeted reader Tim Hanrahan.
Traditionally, shocking or racy covers are a gimmick that editors use to jack up single-copy sales.
However, Bloomberg Business Week averages only 12,102 copies a week on newsstands out of a total circulation of 980,120, so even a big percentage increase in single-copy sales would not matter much in the grand scheme of things.
BBW Editor-in-Chief Josh Tyrangiel said the cover was done purely to illustrate the story.
“Hedge funds have been outperformed by the S&P 500 nine out of the last 10 years, yet the men — and it’s almost all men — who run them remain lionized as masters of the universe and the alpha dogs of finance. Since the blending of financial acuity and machismo has been so thorough, we thought it was fair game to poke fun at it.”
Creative Director Richard Turley and designer Jaci Kessler designed the cover, while Tyrangiel wrote the cover lines. Insiders tell us Turley is credited with coming up with the concept last week.
Page turner
Dave Zinczenko revealed that the first book from his new Galvanized Publishing imprint will be the “Bikini Body Diet” by Shape Editor-in-Chief Tara Kraft.
In fact, all of the first seven titles in the new imprint will be tied to American Media Inc. titles — a move that is sure to amp up the boiling rivalry with his former publisher Rodale and CEO Maria Rodale.
Steve Perrine, the former head of Rodale Books who was cut loose the same day last fall as Executive Vice President Zinczenko, has teamed up with Zinczenko at AMI, overseeing its nascent books unit.
At Rodale, Zinczenko and Perrine produced more than a dozen New York Times bestsellers, including Zinczenko’s “Eat This, Not That” and “The Abs Diet” books.
Kraft took the bikini challenge and modeled the results in the June 2012 issue of Shape, and plans to appear again in the book, which goes on sale later this year.
“Tara distilled the very best tips from stars like Pink, Beyonce, Britney Spears and Jillian Michaels, and then tested [them] all on the most reliable test panel of all — herself,” said Perrine.
The book will be available by direct mail and distributed to retail outlets by Random House — which charges AMI a fee — early next year.
Two more are on tap for later this year: “The 101 Best Workouts of All Time” from Men’s Fitness and “The Complete Book of Natural Health Cures” from the editors of Natural Health.
Zinczenko said he hopes to publish about a dozen books in 2014.
Split decision
Tribune Co.’s decision to split off its newspaper arm from its TV holdings likely delays a sale of the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and other papers — at least temporarily.
Some observers are alarmed that the papers’ digital assets and real-estate holdings won’t be going with the Tribune publishing company.
“The value of newspaper-owned real estate varies widely — location, location, location — but over the last three years of newspaper sales, real-estate value has often justified half of overall deal prices,” said Ken Doctor, an industry analyst at Outsell and author of “Newsonomics.”
One source at Herb Allen’s media mogulfest at Sun Valley told The Post’s Claire Atkinson that without digital and real estate in a new Tribune Publishing Co., he was worried the new company could face another bankruptcy within three years. Tribune recently emerged from a long, contentious bankruptcy process.
The split doesn’t seem to have appeased ratings firm S&P, which is keeping the company on credit watch negative after the spinoff announcement.
“It is unclear how much cash, debt and pension obligations might be initially spun off with the publishing assets or what the new entity’s longer-term capital needs might be, which will depend on its growth and shareholder return objectives,” S&P said in a report to clients.