Arthur “Chucky” Browne moved back into the Daily News newsroom this week as the deputy editor.
Officially, that makes him the No. 2 man, behind just Editor-in-Chief Kevin Convey, the Boston Herald import who has been at the helm for just over a year now.
In reality, as one former staffer pointed out, “If Browne is the new deputy editor, it’s only a matter of time before Convey is gone.”
Browne has been one of the more resilient editors in Daily News history. He was fired once by Mort Zuckerman when the real-estate developer took over the paper in early 1993, but showed up the next day as the newly appointed editorial page editor.
He eventually worked his way back onto the news side with a variety of jobs, from City Hall bureau chief to metro editor. So resilient is Browne at surviving the various upheavals, he was given the nickname “Chucky” — after the 1990s horror films where the main antagonist is a possessed doll that wreaks havoc on his enemies and proves all but impossible to kill.
Last week, as chaos seemed to envelop the upper management ranks at the News, Convey told the assembled editors that Browne was coming back to the news side as the deputy editor.
After weeks of rumors that Convey would be replaced by Browne, he is now in an uneasy alliance with Browne as his “deputy.”
The afternoon news meeting had been very poorly attended since Martin Dunn left as editor-in-chief in 2010. Said one insider, “Since Dunn left, the top-ranking editors basically ignored the meeting, leaving Stu Marques to hash things out with the night editors. Since Stu left [last month], Convey has been attending, but appeared uninterested and bored.”
But on Monday evening, one insider said, the meeting was “standing room only.”
While Browne’s style had rankled many on the city side over the years, most of his main adversaries have left in recent years.
Meanwhile, CEO William Holiber, who was a leader in repeated Zuckerman downsizings that finally ended in a virtually all-digital US News & World Report, apparently had to put down one in-house mutiny last week regarding the recent downsizing of a crop of seven Daily News managing editors.
“There was outrage and disappointment at the way it was handled,” said one source. “They were all brought in and told by Convey that the masthead was too big and they were not going to be on it any longer.”
In a meeting late last week, however, Holiber appeared to reverse, or at least put on hold, that decision when he told seven current managing editors that they were not being demoted.
Browne, Holiber and Convey did not return calls. A spokeswoman said, “We don’t discuss personnel matters.”
New Nook
Publishing sources expect Nov. 7 to be the day that Barnes & Noble introduces a new four-color Nook. It is B&N’s response to the Amazon Kindle Fire, which was introduced to much fanfare a month ago.
Dig it
Meredith Corp. said its Meredith Video Studios will launch an original channel called “Digs” on Google-owned YouTube in early 2012.
The channel will feature home- and garden-themed shows from the publisher of Better Homes & Gardens and Family Circle. Digs will launch seven original series, including “Jordan in the House,” with decorating and entertaining diva Jordan Reid, and “Gardens of the Rich and Famous.”
Google’s YouTube said late last week that it is launching 100 online video channels with original programming.
Barclays Capital said that it believes YouTube will emerge as a “major player in independent short-form professionally produced content and sets itself up to be a new media distribution platform and gain incremental ad dollars.”
Barclay analysts Anthony DiClemente and Perry Gold said they believed that YouTube already accounts for $1.6 billion of the online video advertising pie estimated at $2 billion.
Fine memoir
Jon Fine, a former media editor for BusinessWeek when it was still owned by McGraw-Hill, and a longtime media columnist at Ad Age, has inked what is believed to be a low six-figure contract to write a memoir for Viking.
The book is not, however, media-centric. Instead it details the ins and outs of being in an indie rock band called Bitch Magnet and other groups in Fine’s late college and early post-college days.
Fine and his trio, who toured the US and Europe when they were in their early 20s, got back together for the first time since 1990 and were touring in Singapore and Tokyo this week.
“We never got famous,” he said, “but nobody has written about what life is like on the road for the working schleppers.”
Wayne Kabak at the independent literary agency WSK was his agent. The book was sold to Rick Kot at the Viking imprint of Penguin USA. It’s expected to be on shelves by 2013.