Business

New Orleans news creating Big Uneasy

News that the New Orleans Times-Picayune is going to slash its frequency from daily to three times a week sent shock waves through the Newhouse-owned papers back East, which include the Star-Ledger in Newark, the Times of Trenton, the Jersey Journal in Jersey City and the Staten Island Advance.

The newspaper arm of the Newhouse empire, Advance Publications, has seen plummeting revenues as advertising has migrated away from newspapers.

In wrenching negotiations four years ago, the family said that unless it achieved significant buyouts and reductions from its Jersey papers it would sell them to new owners.

The unions and newsroom employees agreed to cuts at that time and the papers continued to publish.

In that round, workers opted to take enhanced buyouts and unions agreed to major concessions.

But the Big Easy news last week sent a new round of fear through the newsrooms.

“People are worried that what happened in New Orleans could be coming East,” said one Star-Ledger staffer late last week. The New Orleans paper is the biggest paper to experience the cuts, but smaller Newhouse-owned papers in Michigan underwent similar changes two years ago and dropped daily frequency.

Insiders say the company has no concrete plan to roll out the New Orleans business plan on the East Coast — at least so far. However, it said that three Alabama papers that currently publish seven days a week will also cut back to three times.

The company does not operate its newspapers with a central headquarters calling the shots, but that has not stopped a lot of worry in Northeast newsrooms.

“It is hard to say if the problems down there are more tied to Hurricane Katrina and the city just never bouncing back or if it is symbolic of the problems within the newspaper industry,” said one newsroom hand.

The company is currently engaged in new negotiations with its drivers, pressmen and mailers. It is trying to cut staff and reduce costs.

The newspaper company, which takes its name from the Staten Island Advance, is headed by chairman Si Newhouse, Jr. and his brother, Donald. The company also has cable holdings and owns Condé Nast, the glitzy publisher of Vanity Fair, Vogue and the New Yorker, which is moving to a new headquarters at One World Trade Center in 2015.

Although the magazines generate buzz and set a certain standard, traditionally the newspaper side of the operations generated most of the profits, at least through the pre-2008 era.

New Orleans, come autumn, will be the largest US city without a daily paper. The Wednesday, Friday and Sunday papers will be augmented by the website. Up to one-third of the staff could get pink slips.

Spending spree

Zimbio Inc., an entertainment and fashion website, landed $8.9 million in second-round financing earlier this month and is already spending its newfound cash.

John Newlin, editor-in-chief, said he has just hired Danica Lo, author of “How Not to Look Fat,” and most recently a senior online beauty and fashion editor at Glamour, to head up day-to-day editorial operations of StyleBistro.com, which just opened its first New York office.

Lo started her career as an intern at The Post and worked as the national editor of Racked.com before joining Glamour.

“Basically, it signals a branching out from our celebrity-centric fashion coverage,” said Newlin. “She’ll bring a wider skill set to cover beauty, fashion and some retailing.”

Newlin, based in Silicon Valley, said he’ll be in New York next week to hire up to three new editors in NYC. Eventually, Newlin could add up to six more editors.

Menlo Ventures led the second round of financing for the five-year-old San Carlos, Calif.-based company, with additional investment from Draper Associates, Great Oaks Venture Capital, Fenwick + West Investments, Comerica Bank and others.

StyleBistro recently launched Fashion TV, a site that details the fashions worn by stars on a dozen TV shows including “The Voice,” “Glee,” “New Girl,” and “Modern Family.”

Cat fight

New York magazine created a stir with its story that Janet Robinson, ousted CEO of the New York Times Co., may have been done in a by a convergence of forces ranging from the discontent of Michael Golden, a first cousin of the reigning Sulzberger family, and a long-running feud with the company’s recently departed Internet guru Martin Neisenholtz.

But the one that had insiders scratching their heads was the notion that it was Chairman Arthur “Pinch” Sulzberger’s new love interest, Claudia Gonzalez, that could have had the biggest impact.

Gonzalez lives in Switzerland and had not had much chance to bump up against Robinson.

And after raising the specter of a cat fight between “Arthur’s women” — Gonzalez and Robinson — the mag just as quickly shoots it down.

A Times spokesman said the company had no comment on the article.