HEARST President Cathie Black is close to naming a new editor-in-chief of Redbook, and sources say the two finalists are a top editor at Condé Nast’s Glamour and Redbook’s current No. 2 editor.
Editor-in-Chief Stacy Morrison, is leaving today for “family reasons.”
Morrison recently published a divorce survival guide, “Falling Apart in One Piece: One Optimist’s Journey Through the Hell of Divorce,” through Simon & Schuster.
She did not return a call yesterday for comment.
The top candidates are said to be Jill Herzig, Glamour’s executive editor and long-time lieutenant to Glamour Editor-in-Chief Cindi Leive, and Morrison’s second-in-command, Alison Brower.
The betting is that it goes to the outsider, in part because the monthly Hearst title was down 10 percent in ad pages last year and is down more than 6 percent through the first quarter, even as most of the other Hearst titles stage rebounds.
On the circulation front, Redbook was flat in overall circulation in the second half of 2009 at slightly more than 2.5 million, but single-copy sales, where editors are most seriously judged, tumbled 30 percent.
Sources say that Herzig has been working harder than ever at Glamour following last year’s downsizing and could be looking to land her own gig. Insiders at Condé Nast report she’s been involved in a lot of closed-door phone conversations in recent weeks.
Reached yesterday, Herzig said, “I have nothing that I can tell you.”
And Eliot Kaplan, Hearst’s editorial director, cut us off even before we could make an inquiry by saying, “You know I can’t talk to you,” and then hung up the phone.
Au revoir
Rumors are swirling that the Paris-based Lagardere Group may be in the midst of appraising its US media holdings for a possible sale.
The chatter is said to be coming out of Paris, where sources said management is divided on what to do with its American operations. It follows speculation over the past year that the company had quietly discussed joint ventures of its US operations with several major US publishers — but nothing ever came of those talks.
Lagardere earlier had said it will sell its 20-percent stake in French media operation Canal Plus.
The company’s US operations include Hachette Books, online auto and magazine publisher Jumpstart Automotive Group, Woman’s Day and its global flagship, Elle magazine. Hachette’s US operations are currently in the process of moving into several vacant floors in the Time & Life Building in Midtown.
The latest round of talks will surely add to what has been a lot of unrest at Hachette Filipacchi Media, the US operation that has shut down a spate of magazines in recent years.
Most recently, Carol Smith, the senior vice president and chief brand officer of the Elle Group, left to join Condé as vice president and publications director of Bon Appé tit and the Gourmet brand.
(Gourmet was shut down last year by Condé, but is resurrected occasionally for special issues and cookbooks.)
But moving the other way, Nick Matarazzo, who was a top executive at Hachette until he was forced out last year in a cost-cutting move, returned recently as the CEO of its Jumpstart unit, which includes digital operations as well as Road & Track and Car and Driver.
A Hachette Filipacchi spokesman declined to comment.
No fantasy
The baseball wonks who invented Rotisserie League baseball — the forerunner of the fantasy sports leagues that have of millions armchair players around the world, are about to be featured in an ESPN documentary next Tuesday.
Entitled “Silly Little Game,” the show will focus on the founders, including names that are long familiar in the media world, including Dan Okrent, the former editor of Life and the first public editor of the New York Times; Valerie Salembier, publisher of Harper’s Bazaar; Peter Gethers, a Random House editor and author; screenwriter Lee Eisenberg; sports writer Glen Waggoner and Steve Wulf, now executive editor of ESPN The Magazine.
The game got its name from the Upper East Side restaurant where it was hatched, La Rotisserie Française. keith.kelly@nypost.com