With the first-round deadline less than two weeks away, real estate magnate Mort Zuckerman, owner of the Daily News and US News & World Report, is now said to be considering a bid for Newsweek.
While Zuckerman has converted US News to a monthly from a weekly, and imposed major staff cuts at that title, sources said he believes he could extract major savings from Newsweek if he combined it with the mag he already owns.
Expressions of interest are due to Allen & Co., which is overseeing the auction, by June 4.
If he submits a bid, he would join political Web site Politico, billionaire Ron Burkle, financial data company Thomson Reuters and media mogul Haim Saban, all of whom are said to be in the hunt.
Zuckerman has a checkered history with magazines.
He sold off Fast Company in 2000 for $365 million, making an enormous profit, but sold The Atlantic Monthly that same year for just $10 million more than he paid for it after subsidizing losses at the magazine for a decade.
Last year, Zuckerman eyed BusinessWeek, but pulled out when Mayor Bloomberg‘s company, Bloomberg LP appeared on the scene and eventually won.
The Washington Post Co., which has owned Newsweek since 1961, said it had lost about $28 million last year when it cut circulation and trimmed staff. This year, the title lost $2.3 million in the first quarter, as revenue tumbled 36 percent to $29.4 million.
Heated talks
Newsday’s union leaders huddled with some of the rank-and-file members yesterday to go over the details of a tentative contract that includes 5 percent pay cuts for journalists and 10 percent salary cuts for drivers — and sources said the meeting got heated.
Union negotiators and representatives for Newsday had a verbal agreement with the paper but no formal tentative pact has been circulated as of yet, making many members nervous.
Michael Amon, a vice steward of the Graphic Communications Local 406 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, wrote on his personal blog, “The terms are better than the contract we rejected in January. But a 5 percent pay cut is hard to swallow, especially when Newsday refused to open its books to the union and prove it was losing money.”
Victory lap
InStyle Editor Ariel Foxman may be basking in glory now that the magazine he runs has claimed the half-year ad-page crown in the highly competitive fashion category from Vogue Editrix Anna Wintour.
He’s also blown past Elle Editor Robbie Myers, whose title lost steam in the period and dropped back to third place.
Still, most industry observers think everything will boil down to the September issues and how well the publishers do in hawking ads for what is typically the fattest fashion issues of the year.
In a good year, such as 2007, Vogue outsells its competition by more than 300 ad pages.
“In the old days, I’d say only September mattered and Vogue usually dominated,” said Steve Cohn, editor-in-chief of Media Industry Newsletter, which tabulates magazine ad-page counts. “But this year, who knows?”
InStyle had 1,103.21 pages in the first half of 2010, vs. Vogue’s tally of 987. On the plus side for the surging InStyle, both Foxman and Publisher Connie Anne Philips are ex-Condé Nasties and would like nothing better than to dethrone their former colleagues.
Meanwhile, Vogue Publishing Director Tom Florio earlier this year recruited Susan Plagemann from Marie Claire to round out his publishing team.
Some pundits predict double-digit ad-page growth for magazines in the second half of the year. If that materializes, Vogue might still come from behind and win. Yet a lot will depend on how the uncertainty in Europe affects fashion and luxury advertisers, and the greater the uncertainty, the more difficult it will be for Vogue to close the gap.
Consolation
The National Enquirer may have been unsuccessful in its quest to land a Pulitzer Prize for its work in revealing the secret love child of former vice presidential candidate and North Carolina Sen. John Edwards and Rielle Hunter, but the man responsible for getting the scoop is getting a raise.
Barry Levine, the Enquirer’s executive editor and who spearheaded the reporting on that story as well as the first published reports of Tiger Woods‘ philandering, has been named director of news at the Enquirer.
Levine will be tasked with recruiting new journalists and spotting news. He’ll stay based in New York while the Enquirer Editor- in-Chief Tony Frost re mains based in the publica tion’s Boca Raton, Fla., headquarters.