Business

Little cheer at Condé fete

When the walking wounded gathered for the Condé Nast year-end party last Monday, it was a far cry from its glitzy, glamorous parties at the Four Seasons of yesteryear. This year, as they did a year ago, chief editors, publishers and executives gathered in a windowless back room of Aureole for cocktails at 4 p.m.

Gone for good, apparently, is the luncheon and its secretive seating charts, which were once scrutinized to see who was seated at the right hand of billionaire Chairman S.I. Newhouse, Jr. and who was sitting in Siberia.

The last time that sensational gathering took place was in 2007. After being dropped for three consecutive years, it now seems to be permanently relegated to an earlier, pre-McKinsey golden era at what was once the most glamorous of publishing empires.

In 2009, with the shuttering of six magazines and the axing of over 450 people, there was no cause for celebration. Some wondered if the reviving fortunes in 2010 would mean a return to the Four Seasons. But alas, it seems the company has not erased all of the deficit from a year ago, when it was said to have required a hefty $200 million infusion from the controlling Newhouse family to stay afloat.

Insiders at the event said that CEO Charles Townsend said 2010 was “much better” than 2009 and that 2011 will be “great.”

“We’re poised for growth,” he said, according to insiders. Townsend smiled through his back pain, and then, sources said, went under the knife the following day. The new editor of Architectural Digest, Margaret Russell, limped in on crutches as the result of recent foot surgery. Anna Wintour, the Vogue editrix, was said to be out of the country and didn’t bother to show at what was once a command performance that no chief editor, publisher or top executive would dare miss.

Newhouse, 83, joked that with the retirement of a longtime employee in the Paris bureau, he is now the oldest employee at Condé Nast. “I have seniority, finally,” he said.

Huey on top

John Huey, editor-in-chief of Time Inc., appears to have won at least a paper victory in a long-running feud with Lifestyle Group head Sylvia Auton, a soon to depart executive vice president.

Starting in January, Huey and Martha Nelson, the editor of the Entertainment Group, will once again have all the editors in the company reporting to them.

In the Auton-controlled group that included Real Simple, Southern Living, All You, Health, Cooking Light, and Sunset, editors were reporting to Auton rather than to the editor-in-chief, as is the case at the rest of the magazines in the Time Inc. stable, including Time, People and Sports Illustrated.

Earlier this week, Auton, who is heading home to Britain, was calling all the editors in her group with some startling news: Come January, when Auton’s successor, Evelyn Webster, arrives from London to take over the Lifestyle Group, the editors will no longer report to the EVP. Instead, the top editors of each magazine will be reporting to Huey and Nelson.

“All the editors are very pleased,” said one insider in the Lifestyle Group. “Editors like to report to other editors. Sylvia was able to wrest editorial control for the magazines when she and [outgoing CEO] Ann Moore were running the company.”

Huey early this year stripped his name from the masthead of Real Simple and other titles in the Southern Progress Group. Officially, the company insisted it was just a sign of the new corporate realities after a 2009 realignment split the company into three groups: News, Entertainment and Lifestyle.

Insiders, however, said it was a visible sign of a simmering behind-the-scenes feud with Auton over matters of editorial independence. The situation came to a head at Real Simple in a dispute in the March issue over a Wal-Mart advertorial section for paint, which was placed immediately after an article on how to select paint colors.

The American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME) board felt that the Time Inc. monthly had, indeed, committed a serious violation of the editorial guidelines by making the ad type and headlines look very similar to the editorial type and headlines, causing potential confusion among readers. ASME voted to issue a reprimand. It has no official ramifica tion, but it did serve to publicly embarrass the company.

In the meantime, most editors seem happy to see the back of Auton’s head as she jumps across the pond.

“John and Martha like to keep up the editorial standards of Time Inc. magazines,” said one insider. “Sylvia, was, how would you say, a little more flexible.”

kkelly@nypost.com