The Hearst tower was emp tying out yesterday as more than 100 of the top executives flocked to Washington D.C. today for the first top managers meeting in the era of David Carey, who replaced Cathie Black as president of the magazine group last June.
It’s the first time in two years that such a major confab has been held by Hearst and the first time in four years that it went on the road. In recession-scarred 2009, Black was forced to keep the show at home in New York.
Of course, one of the key topics on the agenda will be the soon to be concluded $900 million acquisition of the international magazines of the Paris-based Lagardére Group, which is selling all its magazines outside of France to Hearst.
As many of the titles across the globe still face regulatory hurdles from various governmental authorities in Europe and elsewhere, it now looks like the US portion, known as Hachette Filipacchi Media, will close first, possibly in the next few weeks.
To begin operating the titles as soon as possible, Hearst will close the rest of the magazines on a country-by-country or region-by-region basis. The final piece of the deal is expected to close sometime early in the third quarter.
Of the 630 people now at Hachette Filipacchi, only about 350 are expected to make the move with most of the sales, marketing and editorial staffs safe from the ax.
The buzz early on is that the Hearsties are trying to figure out how to get Elle and Elle Décor installed in the 54-story glass Hearst headquarters tower on Eight Avenue. Lots will be made of which floor the new arrivals are assigned to, since the higher the floor, the higher a magazine’s status in the Hearst hierarchy.
Elle is believed to be making about $20 million a year. The other titles in the HFM group, Woman’s Day, Car and Driver and Road & Track and its digital parent, Jump Start Media, are not likely to make it into the tower, sources say.
In addition to Carey, other new Hearst board members who are expected to address the assembled executives in Washington include Hearst International head Duncan Edwards and Michael Clinton, who seems to have adapted well to his position as No. 2 to Carey.
Edwards is expected to address the Lagardére integration. Frank Bennack, the vice chairman and CEO of the parent Hearst Corp., will be on hand but the Hearst Corp. chairman, George Hearst, the son of the press baron William Randolph Hearst, will skip it — as he always has.
Insiders say that Eve Burton,the chief legal counsel at Hearst who earlier worked at the Daily News and CNN, will deliver what could be one of the more intriguing talks of the three-day session with “A legal look at Apple” on Friday.
But it won’t be all work. Christiane Amanpour from ABC’s “This Week” and author Doris Kearns Goodwin are expected to be on hand.
Awards
It appears the plan by a dirty trickster to discredit the reporting of Jane Mayer on the Koch brothers has backfired.
Mayer’s piece in The New Yorker on billionaires Charles and David Koch, of the diversified empire — who quietly bankroll lots of conservative causes — was among the finalists for a National Magazine Award announced yesterday by the American Society of Magazine Editors.
Mayer was the victim of what appeared to be political dirty tricks by sources who had tried to discredit her reporting on the “Covert Operations” article, claiming some elements in the story and other articles from her past were plagiarized.
That plan backfired when Media Ink found that the journalists who should have been outraged as victims of plagiarism were either credited in the articles or supportive of Mayer’s reporting in general.
Michael Hastings‘ “Runaway General” in the Rolling Stone, which led to the resignation of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, is also up for an award in the same category — reporting — vying against Harper’s Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, which had six overall nominations, and Virginia Quarterly Review, which also had six noms.
The New Yorker, edited by David Remnick, led all finalists with nine nominations. But six newcomers all received nominations, including Cooking Light, House Beautiful, Lapham Quar terly, OnEarth, Women’s Health and The Sun.
Time Inc., the nation’s biggest magazine pub lisher, which has been traditionally snubbed when it comes to pick ing up hardware in the winners circle, has nine chances to win with titles ranging from Cooking Light and Essence to Fortune, People and Time.
Thanks to the haul from The New Yorker, Condé Nast tops the list of finalists with 25. The publisher’s nominations also include three for Stefano Tonchi‘s W Magazine.