CONDÉ Nast CEO Charles Townsend and Chairman S.I. Newhouse, Jr. are turning to Washington, DC-based crisis manager and media coach Michael Sheehan to help with PR.
Sheehan has coached Democratic presidential candidates from Bill Clinton to Barack Obama. He handled AIG during its near-death experience and JP Morgan in its acquisition of Chase.
A source said that Newhouse and Townsend were reluctant to make the hire, but did so under prodding from Lucky publisher Gina Sanders, who used Sheehan when she was launching Teen Vogue.
Sanders and others noted that morale at Condé has hit an all-time low. This year it has folded an unprecedented six magazines, including Gourmet and Cookie, and fired at least 460 employees. Its glitzy image has also taken a drubbing on Madison Avenue.
Sanders may be a rising force in the magazine wing. She is married to heir apparent Steven Newhouse, the son of Donald Newhouse, who runs the company’s newspaper holdings. Steven, as CEO of AdvanceNet, oversees a broad swath of digital operations in both newspapers and magazines.
There will be no S.I. Newhouse- hosted Christmas lun cheon for chief editors and publishers at the Four Seasons this year.
The exclusive event, whose much-scrutinized seating chart was an annual Media Ink fixture, is being scrapped for the second year in a row. This time, Newhouse plans to host an evening cocktail party instead.
While the carnage has come to an end in Condé’s magazine holdings, it is apparently picking up steam again in the newspaper side of parent company Advance Publications.
The Staten Island Advance, one of the first papers in the empire of company founder Sam Newhouse, is looking for another 40-plus volunteers to take severance packages before year’s end.
“Our goal is to eliminate slightly over 40 positions through the voluntary buyout,” said publisher Caroline Diamond Harrison. She is the first cousin, once removed, to Si and Donald Newhouse and had moved into the publisher’s job when her father, Richard Diamond, passed away.
Moving
Three top editors and the publisher of BusinessWeek will be moving to Bloomberg LP when the company completes its acquisition of the weekly next month.
The move follows the exit of the two most senior people on the magazine, President Keith Fox — who said he will stay with McGraw-Hill — and Editor-in-Chief Steve Adler, who an nounced his resignation two weeks ago but didn’t reveal a new destination.
One more high-level executive is also leav ing: Roger Neal, who oversaw the company’s ill-fated business social net working site, which attracted only a half-million users and burned through millions of dollars.
Staying put will be executive edit ors Ellen Pollock and John Byrne, and managing editor Ciro Scotti.
On the business side, Publisher Jessica Sibley will keep her title after the deal closes. Carl Fisher will remain marketing and communications director and Tania Secor, vice president of finance, “will have an expanded role.”
The news regarding Byrne was a surprise because he had recently married, and a New York Times wedding announcement said that, unbeknownst to staffers, he would be “relocating to San Francisco.”
After the honeymoon, he told anxious staffers that while he’d like to move to San Francisco eventually, he’ll be bi-coastal for the foreseeable future.
Norm Pearlstine, chief content officer of Bloomberg and soon chairman of BusinessWeek, said in a memo that he expects to let BW staffers know whether they will be offered new jobs by Nov. 20.
“Bloomberg expects to maintain a majority of BW employees,” he said.
He also said that most BW offices and bureaus will be moving into Bloomberg facilities on December 4.
Lifestyle cuts
The Time Inc. cutbacks moved into the Lifestyle Group headed by Executive Vice President Sylvia Auton.
Yesterday the Web site mediaofbirmingham.com reported that there were “dozens” of axings in the Birmingham, Ala., offices of Southern Progress, primar ily at flagship Southern Living.
In New York, about three people were let go at Real Simple.
A Time Inc. spokes woman would not con firm the numbers but did say, “There were layoffs today in Birmingham.” keith.kelly@nypost.com