VANITY Fair yesterday took some of the deepest staff cuts at Condé Nast, but Editor Graydon Carter didn’t deliver the bad news himself.
Although Carter was said to have been at his restaurant, The Monkey Bar, Wednesday night, he was a no show in the office yesterday because he had jetted off on a vacation yesterday morning.
Vanity Fair’s layoffs were said to be in the double-digit range, and hit as high as senior editors and as low as fact checkers, and were deep, in part, because Carter largely ignored the edict to chop 5 percent late last year.
Additional people will be booted from the contributing editor ranks, a source said.
A VF spokeswoman would confirm only that there were layoffs yesterday afternoon.
The ax also finally fell at GQ, with seven staffers let go from the men’s fashion magazine.
The total number of people fired this year from S.I. Newhouse‘s Condé Nast is now believed to be more than 450.
As the third week of carnage came to a close, one source said that the end seemed to be in sight.
The company is expected to have a net loss of $200 million on an ad revenue falloff of more than $400 million compared with a year earlier.
CEO Charles Townsend had commissioned management consultants McKinsey & Co. to scrutinize the company’s operations for three months.
Teen Vogue is among the few magazines that have not had cuts.
Good change
There are more Condé changes, but not of the carnage variety.
The company, which sacked about 15 in its CondéNet operations last week, says it is regrouping its digital sales force into five major categories.
The 26 online brands will now fall into: fashion and beauty; food, well-being and travel; bridal; technology; and culture and thought leader.
Senior Vice President and Chief Revenue Officer Drew Schutte will remain at the helm.
However, Josh Stinchcomb has been named to the new post of publisher.
Alice McKown has been named executive director of marketing.
No sale
Bruce Wasserstein’s heirs have no intention to sell New York magazine now that its benevolent patron has passed away.
“The company will continue to be controlled by a Wasserstein family trust that is proud of the work being done by New York magazine and its online properties nymag.com, MenuPages.com, and Grub Street,” said Anup Bagaria, the man who was running most of Wasserstein’s major media holdings.
“We will continue the high standards set under Bruce’s leadership which have established us as an innovative and forward-thinking media property.”
Wasserstein bought New York magazine five years ago for $55 million. To shield it from shareholder pressure, he purchased it through a family trust. Speculation has swirled that with Wasserstein gone the trust might be inclined to sell.
Less certain is the fate of The Deal LLC and Penton Media, a trade publishing company that had hired Rothschild to work out arrangements on nearly $1 billion in debt.
Penton is 50 percent-owned by a Wasserstein investment company.
“I don’t know what the fate of The Deal will be,” said one source close to Wasserstein.
Cottage deal
Richard Ekstract, founder of Cottages & Gardens Media, has sold his three regional shelter magazines to a company headed by industry veteran Marianne Howatson of Dulce Domum LLC.
Hamptons Cottages & Gardens, Westchester Cottages & Gardens and Connecticut Cottages & Gardens are all part of the deal.
Howatson has had a wide variety of media jobs, ranging from president of Playboy publishing to Gruner + Jahr, where she was group publisher of Parents and the teen title YM. She has also served as publisher of Self and Travel & Leisure. She partnered with Jay Chiat to take Screaming Media public be fore the dot- com bubble burst in 2000.
Her plan is to crank up the frequency of the free circulation magazines.
Ekstract tried to sell the magazines two years ago, and said he plans to work on producing reality TV shows and creating a video art museum.