The editor behind red hot Teen People, Christina Ferrari, is packing it all in to move to Europe.
Ferrari told a stunned staff yesterday that she was leaving after getting a call that New York magazine was preparing a story for next week’s issue on her pending jump.
Sources close to the situation say she plans to join her mate, Henry Muller, an editor-at-large for Time Inc. and the former No. 2 editor in the whole company, in Geneva, Switzerland.
The magazine was launched in January 1998 with a rate base of only 500,000. It’s since jumped to 1.6 million and is closing in on the category leaders, Seventeen and YM, with circulations topping 2.2 million.
The news that Muller was involved with Ferrari rocked the staid Time Inc. establishment when it was revealed in September 1999. At the time, Muller was still married to Maggie McComas, and Ferrari was separated but not divorced from Phillip Whitney, son of the late, legendary Glamour editor Ruth Whitney.
Muller, in the spring of last year, said he was going to step down and become an editor-at-large for the corporation and do more writing.
His job as the No. 2 editor in the corporation was eventually filled by Time Managing Editor Walter Isaacson in November.
Muller is expected to keep his editor-at-large stripes from his perch in Europe, but Ferrari is severing her ties to Time Inc. entirely.
Ferrari and Muller could not be reached for comment at presstime.
In a memo to staffers, Time Inc. editor-in-chief Norman Pearlstine said, “Christina has graciously agreed to stay with the magazine until February and work with her successor, whom I expect to name shortly.”
He added, “We sincerely hope that when she decides to become engaged in magazine-making again, it will be with Time Inc.”