Business

FRENCH DISCONNECTION

THE year of the French is over for “Bid ‘Em Up” Bruce Wasserstein.

John French, head of Wasserstein’s sprawling trade magazine empire Penton Media, is stepping down. French broke the news to surprised employees yesterday in a “Hello, everyone” e-mail released internally.

French said the decision to leave was a “difficult one,” but he added that he would stay on the Penton board and help in the search for his successor.

“This decision has been a difficult one and Penton’s board of directors and I have had numerous discussions regarding the organization’s evolution and the leadership needs going forward,” he wrote. “We believe that my leaving is truly the next step in a significant transformation, which is already well under way across the organization.”

In late June the company was given a negative outlook by Standard & Poor’s, after being placed on credit watch in April. A new CFO was appointed last month. French did not return a call seeking comment.

The Penton board has two co-chairmen, Anup Bagaria, a longtime and trusted Wasserstein aide who is also the business head of Wasserstein’s New York magazine, and Tyler Zachem, a managing director at MidOcean Partners.

Bagaria did not return a call seeking comment.

“The job of a CEO of a traditional media company these days has the life expectancy of a second lieutenant in Vietnam,” said Thomas Kemp, founder of the media investment firm Oakstreet Media.

While it is now known as Penton Media, the company is really the culmination of Wasserstein’s forays into business-to-business magazines over the past four years, during which he has quietly cobbled together what is now the third-largest business magazine publisher in the country.

Though the spotlight is always on Wasserstein in his roles as the boss of Lazard and the owner of New York magazine, his trade-magazine publishing portfolio is substantial.

Its 113 titles and 150 trade shows are diverse. They include hi-tech titles such as Windows IT Pro, basic nuts-and-bolts mags like American Machinist and farming titles like National Hog Farmer and Hay & Forage Grower.

The company traces its roots back to at least 1892, when iron molder August Penton started Foundry magazine in Detroit. But the modern incarnation with Was serstein got its start when Henry Kravis‘ Kohlberg Kravis Roberts began unwinding the troubled Primedia empire.

The business-to-business titles were sold to Wasserstein’s US Equity Partners in 2005 for $385 million and used to form a new company that was promptly rechristened Prism Business Media.

Then Prism purchased publicly traded Penton in February 2007 for $535 million. At the time, French, from the old Primedia/Prism operation, had outmaneuvered David Nussbaum, CEO of the old Penton operation, to become the CEO of the combined entity.

One of the companies that Wasserstein beat out to buy Penton was Zachem’s MidOcean Partners. But in a deft financial move, Wasserstein subsequently brought MidOcean in as a partner.

Today, Penton is 50 percent owned by MidOcean and 50 percent owned by Wasserstein’s US Equity Partners.

In April, Standard & Poor’s put the company on credit watch with negative implications, and on June 27, S&P changed its outlook to negative.

New ZIP

The moribund magazine about Harvard University, 02138, is about to get a major facelift and an infusion of high-level talent as new owner Manhattan Media gets set to relaunch the magazine as a bi-monthly beginning with the December/ January issue.

Legendary Esquire magazine cover designer George Lois has been hired by CEO Tom Allon to do the first cover of the redesigned magazine, while Luke Hayman, who worked at New York magazine before joining design firm Pentagram and participating in last year’s redesign of Time, will work on the overall look of the magazine.

David Blum, who had a brief stint as The Village Voice’s editor before landing at New York Press, has been tapped to run 02138’s relaunch.

Most of the magazine’s founding team in Boston has left the title now that it’s been sold twice and relocated to New York. At the moment, it’s sharing office space with the New York Press.

Allon has also taken a giant step on the publishing side by hiring Jamie Hooper, former Giant magazine founder and ex-group publisher of Maxim, to become the CEO of the newly formed Alumni Media Network subsidiary of Manhattan Media.

“I feel our team is now on a par with our readers,” said Allon, whose company also owns Avenue and weekly papers including the New York Press, Our Town and the Chelsea Clinton News.

The magazine, which has yet to turn a profit, has published seven issues and produces the much-buzzed-about Harvard 100 list.

Though the magazine hasn’t published an issue since March, Allon thinks he’ll be able to attract the same core of high-end advertisers, cut costs and turn a profit within two years.

The magazine is a lifestyle magazine centered on Harvard, but is not sanctioned by the university and tries to show the good, the bad and the indifferent.

“In the next three years, we hope to have between five to eight magazines for elite alumni,” said Allon, who’s a graduate of both Cornell and Columbia. He’d like to add those two, plus Yale, Stamford, Princeton and Dartmouth.

Allon said he is also launching a social networking Web site for Harvard alumni with a target launch of November.

Peace

Although the staff at the Village Voice always seems ready to rumble, a rare calm has descended upon the alternative weekly – a new three-year labor contract.

The old deal expired June 30. The pact, reached early on the morning of July 1, was sealed with a toast of scotch, according to Voice Editor-in-Chief Tony Ortega.

The United Autoworkers Local 2110, which represents business, advertising and editorial workers at the paper, had been fighting a company plan to move employees into a contributory health-care plan that required them to make out-of-pocket contributions.

In the end, the union got a non- contributory plan, in exchange for very modest wage increases. Lower tier workers were given pay hikes at a flat rate between $25 to $30 a week.

“I always heard that negotiations go down to the wire and they did this time as well,” said Ortega. “It’s been a rough time in the newspaper industry, but I think people in the building feel pretty happy about the way things are going.”

Since the Voice was taken over by Phoenix-based New Times two years ago (the combined company is now called Village Voice Media), the editorial staff has been cut in half.

keith.kelly@nypost.com