A top publishing executive at AM New York, part of the Cablevision-owned Newsday Media Group, was arrested at the freebie newspaper’s Manhattan offices on Thursday for a domestic violence assault and attempted strangulation of his girlfriend.
Ronald Spears, 38, who is the national sales director of AM New York, was taken out of the paper’s offices in handcuffs by police on Nov. 17 and charged with four counts of misdemeanor assault stemming from the domestic violence incident involving his girlfriend, 45-year-old Angela Tyler. He is alleged to have brandished a frying pan, pushed his girlfriend to the ground and attempted to strangle her while screaming, “I am going to teach you not to mess with me,” according to the Manhattan District Attorney’s office.
He was freed on $1,500 bail on Nov. 18 after spending the night at the Manhattan Detention Center.
Police sources said Spears allegedly assaulted Tyler in her Midtown apartment on Nov. 11 around 11 p.m. after the couple had been partying at the nightclub Tao.
Spears placed his forearm and hands on Tyler’s neck, attempting to strangle the victim, according to the charges. He also tried to prevent Tyler from using her phone to call 911. A neighbor was said to have heard the assault.
Media Ink attempted to reach Spears at the AM New York offices the day after the arrest, where a colleague promised to relay the message, but he did not return the call by press time.
Spears’ boss, AM New York Publisher Paul Turcotte, did not return a call. A Cablevision spokesman said the company was declining to comment on the incident.
Spears is due back in court on Jan. 24, according to the DA. Michael Cornacchia, the lawyer who represented Spears at the arraignment, also declined to comment.
Brown hire
IAC/InteractiveCorp CEO Barry Diller and Newsweek owner Sidney Harman have yet to finalize their merger agreement to establish The Newsweek Daily Beast Company, but incoming Editor-In-Chief Tina Brown has apparently already made her first hire.
She dipped into Condé Nast to take Dirk Barnett from Brandon Holley‘s Lucky to make him the new creative director of the venture. Barnett, who came from Maxim, had been on the new job just two days.
Barr bounced
British press lord Richard Desmond is going to have a hard time convincing people that his ad page gains on the US edition of OK! are real now that he has bounced its publisher, Stephen Barr.
According to Media Industry Newsletter, OK! is booming, with a sales increase of 21 percent through the Nov. 22 issue. The key job of a publisher is to sell ads.
Barr took over from Lori Burgess, who earlier this year headed west to Prometheus Global Media to serve as the publisher of the revamped The Hollywood Reporter.
Rivals have long claimed that OK!’s numbers are inflated because it has been cutting its ad rates to secure business. The result? Its ad page performance looks very strong, even if the underlying revenue is not.
An OK! spokesman confirmed that Barr is gone but said no replacement has been named. The spokesman also added that newsstand sales have been on the rise since former In Touch Editor-In-Chief Richard Spencer took over on Oct. 5.
Circulation was in pretty battered shape. In the first half of the year, OK! missed the rate base it promised advertisers by over 100,000 copies as its circulation dropped to 695,197, off by 14 percent.
The newsstand portion dropped 9.6 percent to 335,017. Since Spencer arrived, a spokesman said, only one issue sold in the 300,000 range on newsstands; the rest have been in the range of 400,000 to 500,000 copies a week.
Fine editor
Jann Wenner — through his Editorial Director Will Dana — confirmed that Jason Fine will indeed be the new editor of Men’s Journal. Fine will keep an editor-at-large title at Rolling Stone, and sources say he remains involved in music coverage.
He immediately has some big jobs to fill at MJ. Corey Seymour, articles ed itor, who co-wrote the “An Oral History of Hunter S. Thompson” with Wenner, is leav ing on Dec. 5 to be come senior articles editor at W, reporting to Stefano Tonchi.
That same day, Crea tive Director Paul Martinez will be packing it in to head to Maxim, the laddie title that was once owned by troubled Quadrangle but is now in the hands of lenders.
No replacements have yet been named. kkelly@nypost.com