MORE turmoil in the ranks of Mort Zuckerman‘s troubled New York Daily News.
David Bianculli, a TV critic who has been at the Daily News for 14 years, is about to get the boot.
Sources said that his contract is not going to be renewed when it expires this fall and that his last column will probably run in late October.
“Everyone is horrified,” said a source familiar with the situation. “I assume it is a money thing. They’ll probably replace him with some blogger who sits around in his pajamas.”
It’s the latest in a long line of editorial people to hit the road since Editor-in-Chief Martin Dunn tapped Orla Healy to be the managing editor/features two years ago.
Asked about a replacement, Healy told Ink, “Honest answer, I haven’t decided.”
Bianculli, a columnist who had been known to crank out two or three stories a day for the paper, could not be reached for comment.
Happy Bruce
Bruce Wasserstein might be one of the happiest men in the publishing dealmaking world right now.
Last Thursday, he closed on the $630 million deal to sell American Lawyer Media to the British publisher Incisive Media, which publishes Legal Week and is now owned by the investment firm Apax Partners.
“Any large deals that need to be syndicated are a mess right now,” said one media investment banker. “Wasserstein has to be pretty happy given the jittery credit markets.”
Although Wasserstein didn’t quite get the $650 million or more that he initially wanted when he put the publisher of American Lawyer and The New York Law Journal on the block, the deal was still a pretty hefty 11.7 times the group’s cash flow of $54 million.
American Lawyer Media’s sale will mean a few key executives will be ending their long-term involvement with Wasserstein’s companies to join the company’s new owners.
William Pollack, American Lawyer’s CEO, is expected to stay on as chief executive of Incisive’s North American wing, reporting to Incisive’s top gun and CEO Tim Weller.
Jack Berkowitz, an American Lawyer senior VP and veteran circulation and deal adviser to Wasserstein, takes over day-to-day legal publishing in North America for the new British owners as well.
Meanwhile, New York magazine, which Wasserstein snapped up from Primedia for $55 million in January 2004, is getting a new corporate name and new space in downtown Manhattan next week at 75 Varick Street.
The new name for the company will be New York Media.
The magazine is putting out a double issue this week so it won’t need to have everything unpacked immediately.
“We’re awash in packing tape,” said a spokeswoman.
But for a change, sources say, the magazine is no longer awash in red ink: the weekly is in fact cranking out a small profit this year, which is being pumped into the nymag.com Web site and other related properties.
“Right now, technically, we’re still negative because of investing in the Web, but next year, even with continued investment, we’ll be profitable,” said New York Media CEO Anup Bagaria, one of Wasserstein’s key operating guys in his media businesses.
New York had been losing between $2 million to $3 million a year when Wasserstein, known as “Bid ’em Up Bruce,” emerged as the surprise winner for the once-profitable magazine from Primedia.
Wasserstein beat out Michael Wolff, Mort Zuckerman, Nelson Peltz, Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein.
The deal was made through the Wasserstein Trust, a private family-owned trust that is separate from Wasserstein & Co., and U.S. Equity Partners, a fund that Wasserstein controls.
Some speculated that the deal was always seen as a vanity play or as too risky financially.
Bagaria insisted it was never offered to Wasserstein & Co. or U.S. Equity “because it was intended to be a long-term holding.”
The fund is concerned more with the buying and selling of assets to reap gains for investors.
Much of the other Wasserstein media holdings are in motion as well.
At the Wasserstein-controlled Penton Media, which combined the Primedia Business titles under the Penton Media name last year, there were a few bumps.
CEO John French suffered a heart attack three weeks ago, but is recovering nicely and is expected to be back on the job by next week.
Also, revenue growth at Penton, now one of the largest business publishing companies in the U.S., has not been quite as robust as originally forecast, even though cost savings are coming in ahead of schedule, said one source.
The revenue of the privately held firm is believed to be in the $450 million range with profits believed to be around $120 million a year.
But since MidOcean Capital Partners entered into the deal as a 50 percent co-owner, the Wasserstein camp is already way ahead of the game.
Kushy deal
Wasserstein’s success couldn’t keep The Deal, another Wasserstein-owned property, from losing Associate Publisher Stephen Goldberg to Jared Kushner‘s New York Observer.
Goldberg is the new associate publisher of the salmon-colored tabloid, replacing Betty Letterman.
“We’ve been looking for one for quite awhile,” said Kushner, the scion of real-estate magnate Charles Kushner, and publisher of the newspaper. “Obviously, I’m trying to build the business side to keep pace with the editorial side,” which went through a major revamping in February when it went from a being a broadsheet to a more compact tabloid.
On other fronts, Kushner has also made a rapprochement with Daniel Rattiner, publisher of the East Hampton Star.
The paper had once been co-owned by Arthur Carter, the wealthy founder of the Observer. But relations became strained when Carter decided to exit and tried to line up an alternative buyer.
The Rattiner family was forced to mortgage the property to come up with the money to buy out Carter and retain full ownership.
At the time, it appeared there had been a permanent rift between the Observer and the Star.
Now, Kushner has hatched a deal in which the Observer will be inserted into the papers of about 3,500 Star subscribers each week.
“We figured it’s a very similar demographic,” said Kushner.