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In a big shake-up at Maxim publisher Alpha Media, industry veteran Jack Kliger is coming on board as “executive chairman” and taking over from just-ousted CEO Joseph Mangione.
As the de facto chief executive, Kliger becomes the fifth person to hold the top spot in the past four years since Quadrangle Capital Partners took over what was then a three-magazine company from British publishing maverick Felix Dennis.
In 2009, Quadrangle defaulted on its debt to lenders, including Cerberus Capital Partners, who took over Alpha Media in a debt-for-equity swap. By the time of the takeover, two titles, Stuff and Blender, had been closed and Alpha consisted of Maxim and its related spin-off digital offerings.
As part of the shake-up, Ben Madden, who had been chief revenue officer, will become president. No one is getting the CEO title. An internal memo said only that Mangione “will be leaving as part of the leadership reorganization.”
Kliger was a former CEO of Hachette Filipacchi Media, which published Elle and Woman’s Day before selling them to Hearst.
More recently, Kliger has been running his own publishing consulting firm, Kliger Media. In that role, he has been the acting CEO of TV Guide for the past three years, although he never took the official title. Instead, he was portrayed as a senior adviser to the investment firm that purchased it from Gemstar.
In an unusual twist, Kliger is going to continue in the role of running the 2-million-circulation TV Guide while he takes on added responsibilities for Maxim.
Maxim, with a circulation of 2.5 million, saw its 2011 ad pages tumble 15.9 percent year-over-year to 504.25 pages.
Madden is expected to handle most of the day-to-day duties, while Kliger works on getting the back shop in shape.
“I didn’t come up here with a mandate to do anything other than set the business on the right course,” said Kliger, shortly after he appeared at the Alpha headquarters yesterday.
Sam gone
Gridlock Sam has hit the skids.
It did not take long for the newly installed editor-in-chief at the Daily News, Colin Myler, to swing the ax.
Sam Schwartz, who writes the six-days-a-week “Gridlock Sam” column, told readers in a farewell note yesterday that he had just about reached the end of the road after 22 years of writing a daily column for the paper.
Schwartz, a former first deputy transportation commissioner for the city, said he will be appearing in the paper one day a week on Sundays but that he will continue to tweet regularly.
In other News news, Myler is said to have blown a cork when News photogs did not come up with a decent shot of Beyoncé’s getaway car from Lenox Hill Hospital.
Mailer in
The pressure on Village Voice Media to drop its “adult services” sex ads continues to gain momentum.
The current owners of Village Voice Media, including CEO James Larkin and top editor Michael Lacey, have given little indication that they will halt the ads, saying they will try to patrol them better but insisting that they are protected by the First Amendment.
The latest to join the outcry is John Buffalo Mailer, the son of “The Naked and the Dead” author Norman Mailer, who was among the three original co-founders of the weekly paper.
In a statement yesterday, Mailer said he had joined a petition from Change.org with 80,000 signatures calling for Village Voice Media to drop the adult ads from its network of classified ads.
Craigslist was hit with a similar public outcry and eventually dropped the ads, forfeiting an estimated $44 million in advertising.
After Craiglist bowed to pressure, traffic to the Village Voice’s backpage.com, where it runs the adult ads, immediately shot up.
The ads are said to be bringing in at least $2 million a month to the Village Voice group, which in addition to the namesake publication includes alternative weeklies around the country. It is headquartered in Phoenix.
“While I understand the financial difficulties facing all print publications today, the fact of the matter is that Village Voice is making money from selling advertisements that others have used to buy and sell minors for sex,” Mailer said.
In August, all 51 attorneys general sent a letter to Village Voice Media asking them to drop the section. Samuel Fifer, an attorney representing Village Voice Media, said, “We’re still talking” with the National Association of Attorneys General.
In October, an interfaith religious group called Groundswell chimed in, stating in a full-page ad in the New York Times: “It is a basic fact of the moral universe that boys and girls should not be sold for sex.”
While Lacey did not return a call yesterday, the Voice has previously issued a statement on the matter: “Backpage.com has extensive, working relationships with law enforcement, from the FBI to local police,” the company said. “This is part of a concerted effort to protect underage kids from predators. We look forward to sharing this data.”