A new battle for New York is underway, as the well-financed Modern Luxury operation invades the city with a new magazine, to be called Manhattan.
Richard Martin, who is currently the editor of Modern Luxury’s recently launched Miami magazine, will be heading to New York to be the editor of Manhattan.
The first issue of the bi-monthly is set to debut in September, around Fashion Week, with free circulation of 65,000 mailed to the most affluent households in New York.
Martin, the former editor-in-chief of Complex, said he has hired former Maxim man James Heidenry to be executive editor, and Lauren DeCarlo is coming from Lucky to be a senior editor.
“We’re going to be covering fashion, art, design, architecture, real estate and other things that matter to sophisticated New Yorkers,” said Martin, who added he’ll eschew politics, sports and economic coverage, as well as service pieces such as cheap eats, which are staples of Bruce Wasserstein-owned New York magazine.
The launch of Manhattan means that Modern Luxury’s battle against Jason Binn, CEO of Niche Media, is going to intensify.
Binn owns the glossy party-heavy monthlies Gotham and Hamptons Magazine, as well as L.A. Confidential and the soon-to-launch Michigan Avenue in Chicago.
Last year, Roy Disney‘s Shamrock Holdings sold its majority stake in Modern Luxury to Clarity Partners for $243 million, and brothers Michael and Stephen Kong, who continue to run Modern Luxury, announced plans to ramp up with an aggressive expansion program in cities across the US.
In the past year, they’ve launched in Hawaii and Miami, and plan to expand overseas. The company currently has 33 titles in 13 major markets including Miami, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Michael Kong, Modern Luxury’s CEO, expects revenue to hit $85 million this year, up from $69 million last year. His brother Stephen will be Manhattan’s publisher.
Industry observers believe Modern Luxury’s expansion plans played a big role in precipitating the merger between Binn’s Niche Media, Jerry Powers‘Ocean Drive in Miami and Greens pun Media, which owns the Las Vegas Sun newspaper as well as magazines and TV stations.
But the CEO tried to downplay any rivalry with Binn and Gotham.
“There may be a knee-jerk reaction comparing us to Gotham, because it will be the same size, but we’ll be focusing on a slightly older, more affluent audience,” insisted Michael Kong.
Nevertheless, the magazine faces long odds.
“I hope they’ve done their homework to see how New Yorkers are responding to economic pressures,” said Caroline Miller, a former editor-in-chief of New York who also served as the editorial director of the now defunct Absolute.
Another upscale New York regional mag, Absolute, crashed and burned after its wealthy Spanish backer sold the business and the new owner bailed when he found out how expensive it was to launch a magazine here.
Poach
Tina Gaudoin, editor of the glossy WSJ magazine that is slated to spring forth from The Wall Street Journal on Sept. 6, has just raided the Condé Nasties for her deputy.
He is Owen Phillips, currently the managing editor of Men’s Vogue. He’ll start at WSJ later this month.
The magazine will begin as a quarterly inserted into 800,000 domestic copies of the newspaper, plus European and Asian editions, for a total circulation of 950,000. It will become monthly in 2009.
Misfortune
Nobody wanted to take the voluntary buyout package that Fortune Managing Editor Andy Serwer was offering to staffers in the hopes of avoiding forced layoffs.
And so, late Wednesday, staffers began to get the word.
So far, those leaving are said to include one of the magazine’s five assistant managing editors, Cait Murphy. She could not be reached for comment.
We also hear that a writer, a senior writer and an administrative assistant were given the heave-ho on Wednesday. That means the toll is less than the half-dozen people that had been expected to get the ax.
Philip Elmer-DeWitt, a one-time Time magazine writer who went to Business 2.0 before it closed, and then made it back to Fortune, is also leaving, but we hear his departure was not part of this round of layoffs. He had, in fact, asked for a package some weeks ago and was granted one.
Sources say that when all is said and done, the overall head count on the editorial side will be down by about 15 people from last year, though the actual number of cuts this week was smaller than anticipated and appears to be over – for the moment.
Rodale shuffle
Rodale President Steve Murphy shuffled the deck again at Rodale. Heading out the door in the shuffle is Bill Ostroff, who was the president of the publishing and marketing group. His job is being eliminated and split between two executives.
Those executives are Mary Ann Bekkedahl, who used to report to Ostroff but now reports directly to Murphy and remains an executive vice president and group publisher, and Gregg Michelson, who becomes an executive vice president of customer marketing. Michelson’s the man responsible for marketing the Web sites and selling the consumer magazines.
Another winner is Men’s Health Editor-in-Chief David Zinczenko. He gets to add the title of editorial director of Women’s Health, in addition to his role at Men’s Health and his job as editorial director of Best Life.
Steve Madden, editor-in-chief of Bicycling, moves up to vice president and editorial director of Rodale International, while Bicycling Executive Editor Loren Mooney pedals into the top job as editor-in-chief.