Newsday-owned AM New York, a freebie paper distributed primarily in Manhattan five days a week, is now without a publisher, amid continuing upheaval at the paper.
Paul Turcotte, who has held the job since March 2010, told staffers he is exiting at year end.
That means that the paper, whose parent company is Cablevision, is now without a top publisher and a top editor.
Diane Goldie, who was the editor and who reportedly did not see eye to eye with Turcotte on a number of initiatives, was pulled back to Newsday’s corporate HQ in November by Debby Krenek, then editor-in-chief of Newsday.
Krenek has since moved upstairs overseeing digital news operaitons for Cablevision’s Channel 12, MSG Varsity and Newsday while still holding an editorial director title at Newsday.
Debbie Henley was tapped to oversee the daily paper.
Goldie was recently named the new editor of a digital project that Newsday is said to be starting in Westchester County. Word is that there are plans to add 25 journalists to the still-unnamed project.
A Newsday spokesman confirmed to Media Ink that Turcotte is making his exit.
Observer profit
Jared Kushner claims he has finally pushed the perennially money-losing New York Observer Media Group into the black, thanks in part to the launch of a number of successful digital products over the past year.
Kushner, the scion of a real estate empire and the husband of Donald Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, bought the unprofitable publication from founder Arthur Carter in 2006. At that time, it was estimated to be oozing red ink to the tune of about $2 million a year.
Losses widened for several years after Kushner’s purchase of the publication, with one source estimating they had gone as high as $5 million a year.
Now, Observer Media Group President Christopher Barnes was happy to tell Media Ink that the stream of red ink is ending.
“We’re expecting a small profit in 2011 and a more substantial one in 2012,” he said.
The privately held company does not disclose exact profits and losses, but revenues are estimated to be over $10 million.
To be sure, there is some skepticism among some rival publishers about the profit boast at New York Observer Media.
“If he’s making money, I’ll eat my hat in front of Macy’s window,” scoffed one rival.
Barnes concedes that all the figures for 2011 are not completely tallied, but when the numbers are added up, he expects that the group will be operating in the black for the first time ever.
Expansion plans on the digital side are under way.
The Web site Capital New York reported last week that the company is hatching ambitious plans to begin pushing Observer.com to be a national-facing Web site.
Insiders said Editor-in-Chief Elizabeth Spiers, the launch editor of Gawker who replaced Kyle Pope at the Observer only 10 months ago, is very comfortable with the digital agenda being pushed by Kushner and Barnes.
Capital New York said she has told staffers that she plans to add about 25 percent more journalists to the staff in the coming year.
Earlier this month, Observer made a dramatic raid on Avenue Magazine, hiring Editor-in-Chief Peter Davis, Creative Director Cricket Burns and Publisher Julie Dannenberg from the 35-year-old lifestyle publication. They will become the team to head up a new glossy magazine to replace NYO Magazine.
The latter will suspend publication until March, when it will be relaunched, possibly under a new name, sources told Media Ink.
Dannenberg will be the CEO of the new magazine venture.
It is expected to begin appearing monthly.
In the past year, Observer Media Group has launched three new digital sites: Betabeat, galleristNY and politickerNY.
Its plan from 2008 to launch a national politicker.com site was scrapped and scaled back to only New York and New Jersey sites.
The salmon-colored print weekly, which started as a broadsheet, was cut back to tabloid size and then re-expanded to a broadsheet. However, it is still believed to be losing money.
The Observer will unveil an iPad edition next month, sponsored by Federal Express and Jaguar.
“Digital has not overtaken print, but it has become a larger revenue stream,” said Barnes, who said digital revenue has climbed by 50 percent in the past year.