The Joe Paterno bio that Simon & Schuster commissioned from Sports Illustrated writer Joe Posnanski is proceeding full steam ahead — even though the premise behind the book has been torpedoed by the child sex-abuse allegations against a former assistant coach that also took down the legendary Penn State football coach.
Posnanski, who is believed to have secured a $750,000 advance this spring, had remained mum on the issue until yesterday morning.
Speaking to a journalism class at Penn State, entitled “Joe Paterno: Communications and the Media,” Posnanski went to bat for the embattled coach, who was fired from the head coaching job on Wednesday after 46 years.
Later on his own blog, Posnanski said that Paterno had to go but that he was a fundamentally decent man, and many people helped by Paterno over the years had not stepped forward in his darkest hour.
Paterno’s former assistant, Jerry Sandusky, was arrested and charged with 40 counts of allegedly abusing eight boys over a 15-year period.
Paterno was not targeted in the criminal probe but came under fire for not doing more to stop Sandusky. After learning of his alleged misdeeds in 2002, Paterno notified the school’s athletic director but never contacted the police.
When Simon & Schuster won the auction, the book had the upbeat title, “The Grand Experiment: The Life and Meaning of Joe Paterno. A biography of America’s winningest college football coach, who changed the country one football player at a time.”
S&S so far is standing by the book.
“We believe in the book, and we believe in the writer,” said Jonathan Karp, executive vice president and publisher of Simon & Schuster. “The book will reflect the sweep and complexity of the man.”
In a lengthy “End of Paterno” note on his own blog, Posnanski said, “The last week has torn me up emotionally… I think Joe Paterno had the responsibility as a leader and man to stop the horrific rapes allegedly committed by Jerry Sandusky, and I believe he will have regrets about this for the rest of his life…For this, he could no longer be the coach at Penn State University.”
But he added that “Joe Paterno has lived a whole life. He has improved the lives of countless people.”
Crystal vision
Jim Spanfeller has tapped former TV Guide president and CEO Scott Crystal to be the new president of the Daily Meal, the foodie Web site that is the maiden site of Spanfeller Media Group.
The site has been pulling in a modest $100,000 a month in ad revenue since launching earlier this year, while attracting about 2 million unique visitors a month, according to CEO Spanfeller.
“His main focus will be driving revenue,” said Spanfeller, who closed a $6 million round of financing in August, led by VantagePoint Capital Partners. That followed the seed revenue of $2 million that helped to launch the company in July 2010.
Crystal oversaw the repositioning of TV Guide, where he worked for seven years through three different owners until 2009. Crystal said he will be hiring the site’s first full-time ad sales people.
Losing Rachael
Readers’ Digest Association, during its earnings call yesterday, blamed much of its quarterly loss on the recently divested Every Day with Rachael Ray, which it said lost $5.6 million in the quarter.
The company also said it has put the Weekly Reader franchise, which is modestly profitable, on the auction block.
RDA said it lost $16.6 million in the quarter before interest, depreciation and amortization, up from a $10.6 million loss in the same period a year ago.
Overall, the net loss, which included one-time charges, narrowed slightly to $76.8 million, from $86.8 million.
When currency fluctuations were added to the mix, the company saw a 4.7 percent decline in revenue to $346.7 million, from $363.7 million a year earlier.
No raises
After laying off 18 people, Daily News CEO William Holiber and Editor-In-Chief Kevin Convey met with a demoralized and highly skeptical newsroom Wednesday afternoon in an effort to boost morale.
One reporter asked if the money -bleeding, Mort Zuckerman-owned paper was going to start giving out pay raises. Holiber responded, “No, there are no plans to do that. We still have to watch costs,” according to one insider.
Zuckerman is said to be trying to hack about $2 million in costs.
Another reporter asked why, if the News was intended to be the paper of the working class, it just laid off so many of its working-class journalists.
One source said that Holiber “contradicted himself so many times, it left you wondering if he even understood the meaning of the words he was using.”
A big party was being planned last night at the fabled Wall Street watering hole Harry’s for the remaining members of the editorial staff to bond, gripe, drink and say farewell to their fallen comrades.
Sources said that Convey and Holiber were not expected to attend.