Business

DOOM & GLOOM-BERG

THE sprawling media-informa tion company that Mayor Mike Bloomberg left behind is bracing for the worst in terms of a fiscal downturn.

“The new top brass here are betting on a recession,” said one insider, in a thinly veiled pot shot at Dan Doctoroff, the one-time economy czar in Bloomberg’s administration who last month was named president of Bloomberg LP.

Doctoroff made a salary of only $1 a year at City Hall, but is presumably getting lots more now that he is on the payroll of the privately held company that was founded and is more than 70-percent owned by the mayor.

Bloomberg LP recently imposed a salary freeze for anyone making a base salary of over $200,000 a year, said the insider.

“Freezes on headcount are soon to come,” added the source.

There has never been a downsizing at Bloomberg- the company is now worth upward of $15 billion, but the recent tightfisted approach has some people grumbling. Most of the sales staff and more than 20 percent of the editorial staff is said to be in the $200,000-plus bracket, the source estimated.

A new conference room, just constructed for Editor-in-Chief Matt Winkler, who is also a corporate board member, is also rubbing people the wrong way.

While they’re freezing salaries, they went ahead and expanded, by about half, the square footage of Winkler’s personal conference room and office, and added new Italian furniture and lighting. The total cost: upward of $50,000.

“It’s good to be king,” sniped an insider.

One insider who wasn’t in the $200,000-a-year bracket thought chopping the upper-salaried people was a great idea.

“I haven’t seen there is a freeze yet, but if there is one at the top, I’d applaud that and consider that equitable,” the insider said. “Usually, in tough times, it is the guys at the bottom who are cut, while the guys at the top continue to get rewarded.”

Seeing the logic in the proposed freezes, the source added: “If they are not planning for an economic slowdown, they’d have to be out of their minds.”

When he first entered the political fray in 2001 and stepped away from day-to-day management at the firm that bears his name, Bloomberg said he was going to sell the company and use the proceeds for philanthropy.

He has since backed away from that plan in recent years and seems happy to exercise some strategic control, while not appearing to want to get back into the company full time.

Paper cuts

The Star-Ledger of Newark lost a staggering $30 million to $35 million last year and is projected to lose about $50 million in 2008, knowledgeable sources briefed on the financials told Media Ink.

The paper could be looking to ax up to 300 people, according to sources.

But the billionaire Newhouse family, which controls the Advance Publications empire, could be in for some fairly tense negotiations with its unions as it goes back to the bargaining table in a bid to extract concessions.

Publisher George Arwady didn’t disclose the extent of the losses, but in a memo to employees earlier this week he said, “We are losing money and we must operate within our means.”

Arwady sent notices to 365 unionized workers in five craft unions last week saying that some of them could lose their jobs within the next 60 days. The non-unionized newsroom would be spared any cutbacks thanks to a pledge made decades earlier not to lay off newsroom staff in exchange for keeping the union out.

Arwady didn’t specify how many would be cut.

But the head of the largest union, the mailers – which is represented by Teamsters Local 1100 – is being asked for a 250 person reduction, according to the union’s attorney, Andrew Hoffmann.

The drivers union, which has about 130 members, has so far refused to meet with the company.

The New Jersey Pressmen’s Union, which has about 150 members at the paper, is talking, but so far there’s been no resolution.

“We’ve had three meetings,” said Paul Montalbano, an attorney representing the union.

“What they are looking to do is explore areas where they can get efficiencies and cost savings,” said Montalbano. He said he didn’t want to comment further while negotiations are underway.

Teamsters Local 1100, which represents the mailers, the largest of the craft unions, completed its latest round of negotiations on a contract in early 2005, and it runs through 2011.

“The dip in the newspaper business had already begun when we were negotiating the last contract,” said Hoffmann. “They said they needed $12-an-hour mailers and we gave it to them.”

The mailers have 400 to 500 people working at the Star Ledger, and many have lifetime job guarantees, Hoffman said.

“I don’t like my people being blamed for the foibles of management,” said Hoffman.

Donald Newhouse, president of Advance Publications and boss of all the newspapers in the family-owned empire declined to comment on the negotiations.

“We met with several of the unions,” Newhouse said. “We told the unions what we thought our losses were this year, but won’t go into details and I’m not going to discuss the negotiations.”

Gary to Gary

Gary Hoenig, who has been around ESPN The Magazine since before it was a real magazine, has moved upstairs, turning the editor-in-chief reins over to Gary Belsky.

Though Hoenig had been editor-in-chief since 2003, Belsky was handed the editor’s title last June when Hoenig added the title of general manager of ESPN Publishing to his resume.

Belsky has been doing the day-to-day at the magazine since January, but because the wheels at parent Walt Disney Co. turn slowly it wasn’t until this week that Belsky was officially named editor-in- chief.

Even though he is losing the editor-in-chief title, Hoenig still has plenty on his plate.

“It’s good for me, I hope it’s good for him,” said Hoenig, who is the new editorial director and general manager of ESPN Publishing.

He said he’ll focus his energy on Rise, a recently acquired, 900,000 controlled-circulation magazine for high school athletes.

“Advertisers are dying to reach this audience,” he said.

Right now Rise is in 6,000 schools but still has a lot of room to grow. Hoenig’s also involved in the recently launched ESPNthemag.com.

New ‘view

Peter Brant, who took over Interview from ex-wife Sandy Brant last month and sent longtime Editor-in-Chief Ingrid Sischy packing, is adding staff.

Glenn O’Brien, the new editorial director, has just hired Chris Boller from V magazine, to be Interview’s editor-in-chef.

Alan Katz, who was forced out as publisher of Vanity Fair after clashing with Editor-in- Chief Graydon Carter, has been hired as group publisher, overseeing Interview, Art in America and The Magazine Antiques.

Katz was most recently at the start-up mytime.com, as president of sales and marketing.

So it goes

Playboy magazine has snagged an exclusive first serial from a new posthumously published book by Kurt Vonnegut.

The book is called “Armageddon and Other New and Unpublished Writings.”

Bonnie Soodek, serial rights editor at Putnam, said the new tome is to have a one-day laydown and a 175,000 first printing on April 1 – coinciding with the one-year anniversary of Vonnegut’s death.

The excerpt will appear in the April issue of Playboy, which hits newsstands next week.

Playboy landed the first serial rights with what is believed to have been a $25,000 offer.

Soodek wouldn’t confirm the figure, but said, “In a world of shrinking serial deals, it was a fabulous deal. Let’s just say that.”

Two other magazines tried to get it after Playboy had sewed it up.

“The excerpt is a first-person ac count of the fire bombing of Dres den,” said Playboy Editor Chris Na politano.

That experience was eventually the inspiration for one of Vonnegut’s most acclaimed novels, “Slaughterhouse Five.”

“It was coup for us,’ said Napolitano.

Brown’s back

Tina Brown, the former editor of Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and the ill-fated Talk, has found a way to get paid for some of her research time on her next book, “The Clinton Chronicles.”

She’s working on a piece on Hillary Clinton that is going to appear in next week’s issue of Newsweek.

Brown had been doing a weekly column for the Washington Post, which she stopped to complete work on what became a bestselling book on Princess Diana, “The Diana Chronicles.”

She is believed to have snagged a $1 million contract to write the Hillary book.

keith.kelly@nypost.com