Daily News Publisher Mort Zuckerman may be recuperating from knee surgery, but that hasn’t stopped him from looking to trim the ranks of the paper’s editorial department.
Sources told Media Ink that voluntary buyouts, offering two weeks’ pay for each year of service went out to “every editorial employee except [Editor-in-Chief] Martin Dunn” late last week and early this week.
“I don’t know,” he told Media Ink, declining to say how many buyouts the paper is seeking. “I didn’t get one.”
The company did warn that if too few volunteers stepped up by a May 28 deadline, the paper could resort to involuntary layoffs. A company spokesman said, “We don’t comment on personnel matters.”
All heart
Talk show host Charlie Rose said he was deeply touched that ABC talk show queen Barbara Walters kept her commitment to present his lifetime achievement award from the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism Monday night despite her being scheduled to undergo heart surgery today.
“For her to come this evening makes me appreciate the meaning of the word friendship,” Rose said.
Walters, 80, had only made the disclosure of her pending heart surgery earlier that morning on her show, “The View.” The procedure is expected to involve replacing a defective valve.
At the awards ceremony, before introducing Rose, Walters made light of the pending operation, ribbing the event’s master of ceremonies and “20/20” host Elizabeth Vargas by accusing her colleague at ABC of coveting Walters’ prized possessions.
“Elizabeth, I know you want my Fidel [Castro] photo, my George Clooney autograph,” said Walters.
Vargas held up her thumb and index finger to indicate, “A little bit.”
“And maybe my office?” Walters continued. “But I’ll be back shortly.”
Walters said she was comforted to hear that Rose had undergone a similar surgery several years ago.
“Sitting next to you tonight gave me confidence and made me feel good,” she said.
In honoring Rose, Walters said his “body of work will be a repository of our times,” and then disclosed that he will be honored with the Legion of Honor medal from the French government.
“We’re here tonight, partly because of me, but we’re here because of journalism,” said Rose, an occasional correspondent for CBS’ “60 Minutes” and host of the long-running “Charlie Rose Show.”
CUNY Graduate School of Journalism is the only public university in the Northeast to offer a journalism graduate degree.
In addition to Rose’s lifetime achievement award, the following graduate students were honored: Collin Orcutt, who wrote about what happens to athletes once they quit pro sports; Aisha Al-Muslim, who did her project on Medicaid fraud in New York state; Jenni Avains, who is writing a book and putting together a Web site on the apparel industry’s practices in developing countries; and Karina Ioffee, who produced a bilingual blog for Latinos in the San Francisco Bay area.
Pinched
While Monday night’s CUNY event overall was about positivity, not quite so friendly was New York Times Co. Publisher Arthur “Pinch” Sulzberger Jr.
When Media Ink sauntered up to the Gray Lady’s boss at the pre-dinner cocktail reception, and said jok ingly, “I guess we’re both a little grayer since the last time we met in person,” Sulzberger responded, “F**k you! You may be grayer. I’m not.”
Then Media Ink followed up with a question about Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, and his intentions for his investment in the embattled newspaper publisher.
Sulzberger responded that the Times “is happy to have him as an investor.”
When Media Ink pressed him further, Sulzberger wandered off, complaining to a sympathetic woman, “He says I have gray hair.”
Ripp’s time
Brendan Ripp, who was vice president of sales at Time magazine, has been promoted to publisher, overseeing the magazine as well as time.com and life.com.
The job has been vacant since Don Fries resigned amid a series of cutbacks at Time Inc. more than a year ago. Mark Ford, group president of Time Inc.’s News Group, had filled in on an interim basis for the past year.
A-OK
Tom Morrissy, most recently publisher of OK! and earlier publisher of Entertainment Weekly, has landed as executive vice president of Synaptic Digital.
The firm makes public relations videos and digital programs for clients, including General Motors, Google and the Gates Foundation.
The company is led by CEO Jim Lonergan, and has private-equity backing from Softbank, Apax Partners, Hearst and Battery Ventures.