American Media — home of the National Enquirer, Star, Shape and Muscle & Fitness — is rejoining the Magazine Publishers of America after a two-year absence, providing the trade group a much needed win as it rethinks its future amid the recession.
The MPA is widely expected to report a drop in 2009 revenue when it releases its financials next month, and its CEO, Nina Lack, has come under fire for collecting a $750,000 salary at a time when some MPA members dropped out to cut costs. The MPA collected $15.2 million in revenue for 2008.
In addition to AMI, New York Media, owner of New York magazine, has returned to the fold after a year-long absence.
Wenner Media, owner of Rolling Stone and Men’s Journal, has finally joined the trade group after nearly 20 years of being a non-member.
Sources said it took a lot of wooing of Wenner Media boss Jann Wenner to convince him to join the trade group. As part of his signing on with the MPA, Wenner will participate alongside other magazine CEOs in a TV ad extolling the virtues of magazines.
Meanwhile, AMI CEO David Pecker is believed to be paying something in the low six-figure range for his company’s annual membership fee.
The MPA is the chief lobbying group for consumer magazines. It also runs an annual conference every fall in conjunction with the American Society of Magazine Editors. This year’s event will be held in Chicago in October.
Source boss
Source Interlink Cos., the company that both publishes magazines and is responsible for getting them onto stores’ racks, is finally said to be close to naming a new CEO.
Among those in line for the job are Rich Jacobsen, president and CEO of Time Warner Retail Sales & Marketing, and Mike Sullivan, president and CEO of Comag, the magazine distribution company jointly owned by Condé Nast and Hearst.
Jabobsen and Sullivan did not return calls seeking comment. Source’s current CEO, Greg Mays, also did not return a call for comment.
Once a public company, Source was taken private after it emerged from a pre-packaged bankruptcy last June. Since then, executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles has been hunting for a new CEO.
Supermarket magnate and billionaire investor Ron Burkle was once the single-largest shareholder but lost everything when the company entered into bankruptcy in April 2009.
The company collapsed under a mountain of debt it piled up when it paid $1.2 billion for Primedia’s enthusiast titles in August 2007.
More cuts
Mort Zuckerman, the billionaire real estate mogul who owns the Daily News and US News & World Report, is making more cuts at his magazine.
In the latest moves, about a dozen people on the business side were given the ax, among them the entire marketing department in New York, including Chief Marketing Officer Lee Wilcox and Nancy Morrissey, the magazine’s vice president of marketing.
The Chicago and San Francisco offices are also being closed, and Paul Kissane, vice president and a sales director also is out.
Others said to be gone in the shake up are Dan Fein, executive director of operations; Margaret Lorczak, director of consumer marketing; Peter Carey and Randi Rosh, marketing design directors; and Olivia Friedman, marketing research director.
A US News spokeswoman said last night, “As per our company policy we do not comment on personnel matters.”
Ante upped
Spencer Ante, an associate editor at Bloomberg BusinessWeek who took a buyout in the last round, is joining the Wall Street Journal as the new deputy editor of its corporate news group, which covers big companies such as General Electric, IBM and Procter & Gamble. Ante starts in mid-April.
Ante, who wrote the 2008 book “Creative Capital,” will supervise telecom coverage, reporting to Drew Dowell. (Like The Post, the Journal is owned by News Corp.) The group is picking up some of the coverage once handled by the now-closed Boston bu reau.
“We’re hopefully adding more reporting muscle to a New York-based corporate reporting group,” said Matt Murray, a deputy managing editor at the Journal. keith.kelly@nypost.com