Last week was another tumultuous one in the ever-churning world of the New York Observer as Jared Kushner — real estate scion, husband of Ivanka Trump and, for the past six-plus years, owner of the salmon-colored weekly — shook things up.
Aaron Gell, the man who had stepped into the breach as interim editor back in August when Elizabeth Spiers suddenly exited, called it quits a few weeks after being demoted to the No. 2 slot.
Early in the new year, he had found out he was going to be superseded by another permanent editor-in-chief, Ken Kurson, the man who had famously served as the collaborating writer on Rudolph Giuliani’s best seller “Leadership” and who has more recently worked as a political consultant for Republican candidates after a short stint at Giuliani Partners.
Kurson is the fifth editor-in-chief since Kushner has owned the paper.
Gell’s departure, first reported as a tweet by Women’s Wear Daily’s Erik Maza, had the obligatory farewell party at the Coal Yard on First Avenue in the East Village Friday night.
In a farewell memo to staffers, he said, “Working for the Observer has been the best experience of my career; I credit all of you, especially Peter [Kaplan, another former Observer editor-in-chief, now editorial director of Fairchild] and all the writers and editors who passed through and helped create a newspaper that despite, ahem, everything has remained such a special place to work.”
Kurson declined to comment.
Just to add to last week’s Observer drama, Kushner also decided it was time for the company to add its first-ever CEO — and hired Joseph Meyer, who is married to Kushner’s sister Nicole. Meyer has deep experience in the hedge-fund world but none in the media world. The 33-year-old was most recently at Paul Singer’s Elliott Management and earlier at Michael Dell’s MSD Capital.
Kushner, who curtailed some of the proposed projects during Spiers’ run — such as a national rollout of Observer.com — is talking expansion once again and possible acquisitions in 2013. Keith J. Kelly
Supe’s up
So here comes the Super Bowl next Sunday, and we all know what that means: countless stomach-churning stories like how 28 million pounds of chips, many collectively loaded with 8 million pounds of guacamole (both actual stats, by the way) will disappear down fans’ maws in that single day.
But On the Money takes a colder-eyed view of the festivities: Namely, what’s it gonna cost us?
Which brings us to the Great Super Bowl Chicken Wing Crisis.
According to Consolidated Concepts, a Boston food-buying and services company, the price of the Super Sunday staple is taking off like Colin Kaepernick on an option play. The National Chicken Council agrees, finding that “the wholesale price of wings will be the most expensive ever during Super Bowl XLVII as the demand rises and the supply has shrunk … the highest on record [in the Northeast] at the US Department of Agriculture, up 26 cents or 14 percent from a year earlier.”
Egad! What are the weekend’s consumers of the 1.23 billion wing portions to do?
Consolidated CEO John Davie has words of reassurance: “While the price of [bone-in] chicken wings is rising, the price of boneless chicken wings is decreasing, because the demand is not as high.”
Kirk Nicewonger
The ‘Perfect’ run
Catherine Russell (photo) never thought she’d be in the Guinness Book of World Records when she stepped onto the stage on April 18, 1987 to play the character of Margaret Thorne Brent in “The Perfect Crime,” but now she is.
Russell is not only the veteran of more than 10,500 performances — one for the record books — but she is also the only owner of an off-Broadway theater with an actual Broadway address.
She performs eight times a week at The Snapple Theater Center, which she built from scratch, at 50th Street and Broadway in a vacant space above the old Howard Johnson’s restaurant, and she has never called in sick in 23 years.
“In terms of economics, I use the analogy of a big studio feature and an independent film — Broadway is splashy, and off-Broadway has less extravagant productions,” says Russell.
When not on stage or changing set lights, Russell teaches English at Baruch College and leads a graduate acting class at NYU.
Post staff