NEW York Times Business Editor Larry Ingrassia has told people that he is no longer pursuing a deal to write about the $5 billion takeover of Dow Jones by Rupert Murdoch‘s News Corp., which owns The Post
The book deal, originally to be written by both Ingrassia and Times columnist Joe Nocera, had been in trouble almost from the start, and stoked resentment among the Times’ rank-and-file, who felt Ingrassia might be swiping story sources from the reporters covering the merger.
“It wasn’t a question of jealousy [about a possible book deal], it was a question of propriety,” said one insider at the Times.
Ingrassia, for his part, maintained that he in fact was providing his reporters with sources to cover the story, not stealing them.
According to sources, Ingrassia, a 20-year veteran of The Wall Street Journal before he became the Times’ business editor, had been obsessed by the deal. His brother, Paul, also happens to be a longtime Dow Jones executive, though he recently said he would leave the company in January.
However, eventually Nocera – who didn’t cover the Dow Jones story regularly for the Times but had written about the company during his days at Fortune – dropped out of the book plan, leaving Ingrassia in the hunt by himself.
Ingrassia, when reached yesterday, would not confirm that the proposal had been pulled. “You’ll just have to go with what you heard,” he said, declining further comment.
Ingrassia and Nocera had obtained clearance from the Times’ top editors before they began shopping their proposal, according to a Times spokeswoman. But many in the newsroom were left in the dark about the deal.
Their proposal went into the market after Doubleday had agreed to pay close to a $1 million advance to Vanity Fair writer Michael Wolff to write about the deal in a Murdoch biography. Wolff’s proposal had become the subject of a heated auction by a half-dozen publishers.
Both the Ingrassia/Nocera proposal and Wolff’s book were represented by agent Andrew Wylie.
Ad czar
Another shake-up has hit Time Inc. as CEO Ann Moore and the executive in charge of the business magazines try to breathe new life into the category.
One week after pulling the plug on Business 2.0, Time Inc.’s 18-month-old Business Information Group has been renamed the Fortune/Money Group.
“I am creating a new sales and marketing organization, which will be overseen by one executive responsible for all print and digital advertising revenue,” Vivek Shah, the president of the Fortune/Money Group, told staffers yesterday.
As part of the shake-up, Michael Dukmejian and Michael Federle, group co-publishers under the old arrangement, are both out, although Federle will serve as a consultant until the end of the year.
Lisa Bentley, an associate publisher with 20-plus years experience, is also exiting.
There was widespread dissatisfaction with the old arrangement, in which sales were divided according to regions and no one had responsibility for a single title.
Under the set-up, each title will now have its own publisher.
Hugh Wiley has been tapped to be the new publisher of Fortune; Brett Wilson is the new publisher of Money and Alan Ives, who was at ABC running digital sales, will be joining as CNNMoney.com’s new senior vice president of sales.
WSJ walk
Two more people have defected from The Wall Street Journal.
Daniel Golden, the Boston bureau chief, is bailing out to join his former colleague Joanne Lipman at Condé Nast’s Portfolio. He will remain based in Boston and will oversee investigations for the magazine.
He’s the second staffer from the Journal who Lipman has hired in a week. Earlier, Hilary Stout, editor of the Personal Journal section, also said she was leaving to join Portfolio.
Further up the masthead at the Journal, Assistant Managing Editor Tunku Varadarajan said he was quitting with the hope of returning to academia – although he has no job lined up yet.
Meanwhile, union organizers are hoping to hammer out an agreement with the Journal before the takeover by News Corp. is finalized.
The company last week made what it said was its best and final offer and gave the union, the Independent Association of Publishing Employees until Oct. 15 to vote on it.
Sex for one
New York Press is trying to clean up its act as its parent company gets ready to march into the borough of steeples and saloons.
Manhattan Media, which on Aug. 1 took ownership of the free weekly newspaper, is launching a glossy parenthood title next week called New York Family Brooklyn and later this fall plans to introduce New York Press Brooklyn.
At the same time, the Press’ new owner has stopped accepting porn and escort ads and has booted sex-advice columnist Dr. Dot.
“We’re not making a value judgment about her,” said Tom Allon, CEO of Manhattan Media, which also owns the upscale Avenue and New York Family in Manhattan. “We’ll still have a sex columnist, Stephanie Sellars, who does ‘Lust Life.’ We just thought that two was a redundancy.”
Allon said he probably kissed off $1 million in ad revenue by cutting out the sex-related ads, but hopes more upscale advertising will replace it.
“We kicked out the explicit ads, the unlicensed massage parlors and ads that are clearly prostitution ads,” said Allon. “It was a pretty big hit revenue-wise, but it was something we felt we had to do.”