One day after Mort Zuckerman shook up his Daily News by cutting loose the paper’s editor, the deposed leader gave a farewell address to the troops.
Kevin Convey, the longtime Boston Herald editor who lasted only 18 months at the ailing News, gave a “short and sweet” farewell address, according to one insider.
“It was a weird ending to a weird tenure,” said the insider.
At about the same time, the incoming editor, Colin Myler, was boarding a plane in London, according to one report, to jet to his new assignment, which starts Jan. 10.
“To the degree we’ve had any success, it is because of you,” Convey told the troops, gathered in the center of the newsroom.
“Every night you made me feel like General Patton,” he said, according to Capital New York, which listened to a live audio feed of the speech that lasted less than two minutes. “You never let me down. Whatever successes I may have had, I’m aware they were because of your hard work. And the failures were entirely mine.”
Most were surprised that Convey turned up in the newsroom a day after his demise was announced by internal memo to staffers. The Daily News did not cover the changing of the guard in its own pages and Convey remained on the masthead yesterday as the top editor.
Arthur Browne, the editorial page editor who was brought in as Convey’s “deputy” last fall, and began running the newsroom at that time, was in attendance.
“I think people are still pretty shell-shocked,” said one insider, who said most expected that Browne would get the job that instead went to Myler.
Browne, a lifelong News hand, wrote a column in yesterday’s paper with the headline, “I’m New York’s Biggest Loser.”
The column was about losing items on the Long Island Railroad — only to have them returned by kind-hearted strangers. But some observers took the headline as an inadvertent reference to a possible, albeit unsuccessful, quest to land the paper’s top job.
In an interview with Britain’ s The Guardian shortly before he boarded a plane to New York, Myler said that he was first offered the News job last October.
He also suggested he would not be averse to bringing with him some of the laid-off British tabloid journalists with whom he worked at the News of the World before it was closed last July in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal.
That may not go over too well at the Snooze, whose staff has always considered it a serious tabloid that was above covering sordid and salacious stories.
Jimmy Breslin, who won a Pulitzer in his heyday at the News in the 1970s and came out of retirement from Newsday to write a Sunday column at the News, has long been a critic of what he regards as an overweening British/Aussie influence on Yankee journalism.
Breslin declined to comment when asked if he could work for the News now under the type of Brit tabloid editor that he had railed against in some of his columns.
“He has no comment to make,” said David Black, Breslin’s agent.
Editors-in-chief have tended to average a little over two years at the News since Zuckerman took over the paper in 1993. He’s had nine different top editors in 19 years — and even hired one, Martin Dunn, twice.
Said one former high-ranking News editor, “You never know what the hell you’re supposed to do — lead with the story about Paris Hilton’s lost dog or that titillating and soooooo important exclusive on the financial boondoggle at some who-gives-a-crap municipal union.”
Myler did not return messages.
Convey, who was out the door as of yesterday, also could not be reached for comment.
Magic moment
Ron Burkle, the supermarket mogul, and NBA Hall of Famer Magic Johnson have teamed up to buy BlackBook Media and its software arm, Access Network Co.
It is going to be combined with Vibe Media, which the two teamed up to buy last year.
Vibe also includes Uptown Magazine.
Ari Horowitz is going to run the combined operation as CEO. Len Burnett and Brett Wright, who had been co-CEOs of the Vibe Media Group, will serve as co-CEOs of the Vibe Lifestyle Network within the merged company.
A fund controlled by Johnson and Burkle, the Yucaipa Johnson Fund, partnered with Leo Hindery’s InterMedia Partners to buy Vibe Media in January 2011.
The biggest plum in the newly acquired business is Access Network, whose software has been licensed to over 100 media operations.
It allows clients to refine their database lists with curated material such as local restaurant reviews.
Access Networks software is used by Corcoran Real Estate Guides, Maxim Guides, MTV’s “Jersey Shore” Guides and Bravo!’s Top Chef Guide, among others.
“We’re passionate believers in the future of technology-driven media companies and the ability to leverage online, mobile, print and local content through premier brands,” said Johnson, who is also part of a group trying to buy the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Johnson will remain chairman of the Vibe Media Group.