Business

DUELING JOURNAL-ISTS

THE race is on.

A budding feud is developing between Vanity Fair columnist Michael Wolff and Wall Street Journal reporter Sarah Ellison, both of whom now have book deals to write about Rupert Murdoch and News Corp.’s takeover of Dow Jones.

Late last week, Ellison snagged what is believed to be a $400,000 deal from Houghton Mifflin to write about the $5 billion acquisition of The Wall Street Journal’s parent company by News Corp., which also owns The Post.

Ellison is a reporter who moved from the media beat to cover the News Corp.-Dow Jones deal full-time in July.

She told Media Ink that she is going to take a one-year leave of absence to write the book starting at yearend. The book is expected to be on shelves sometime in 2009.

Wolff, meanwhile, snagged close to $1 million to write about the same deal for the Doubleday imprint of Random House. His book is expected to be out next fall.

But Wolff isn’t taking kindly to a reporter from the WSJ jumping into the fray.

“The problem with someone from The Wall Street Journal writing a book is that they are inevitably conflicted,” said Wolff. “Either they’re bitter that Murdoch bought the place or they are trying to save their job.”

George Hodgman, Ellison’s editor at Houghton Mifflin, countered: “We have no doubts about Sarah Ellison’s ability to create a great narrative filled with accurate, illuminating reporting.”

New era

C.F. Payne, a Norman Rockwell-type artist who used to have replicas of his oil paintings featured on the back cover of Reader’s Digest, is out as part of the sweeping redesign of the magazine.

In its place is an ad with a near naked – gasp! – woman.

Apparently, the magazine has sold all 12 back pages to soap brand Dove, which is running ads of scantily clad women as part of its Campaign for Real Beauty.

The new back covers, which began showing up in readers’ mailboxes last week, are part of a broader effort to attract younger readers.

But the ads have some of the magazine’s geriatric set seeing red.

At least 80 people have written in so far (real letters with postage stamps and everything) to complain.

Eva Dillon, Reader’s Digest president and group publisher, is so far unmoved by the protest.

“Anytime you make a change some people won’t like it.”

Nails’ mag

Lenny Dykstra, one of the stars of the 1986 World Champion New York Mets, is entering the publishing industry with Players Club, a financial advice magazine aimed at ballplayers.

Dykstra, who earned the nickname “Nails” for his hard-nosed playing style with the Mets and later the Philadelphia Phillies, is a rarity in the sports world: he made more money after his playing days ended than he did in the major leagues.

But he said that is not true for most players and he hopes to do something about it with his company that’s also called Players Club.

The high-end magazine will be filled with lifestyle advice and hard-nosed career and financial planning tips.

“The Players Club is about players helping players,” said Dykstra. “There’s $60 billion paid out to athletes every year in salaries and nobody has cracked the market.”

Dykstra hopes to steer players into annuity funds, which he said can pay out hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in guaranteed income from money salted away when players raked in the big bucks during their playing careers.

He said he has reached out to major insurance companies to offer incentives to players’ agents who steer business their way.

And Dykstra said he hopes to earn money back from insurance companies that would pay Players Club for helping them tap this lucrative but impossible to reach audience.

And since so many of the newly minted millionaires come from Latin America, the new magazine will be in both English and Spanish.

He said he is going to invest about $2 million a year to pay Doubledown Media, which already publishes Trader Monthly and Dealmaker magazines, to print the magazine as part of its custom publishing operation. Players Club is expected to be published six times a year.

Randall Lane, president and editorial director of Doubledown, will serve as editor of Players Club at the launch. Circulation is expected to be around 20,000.

The first issue will hit in the first week of April to coincide with the opening of the Major League Baseball season.

But don’t try to subscribe if you’re not raking in the big bucks in the majors. The Players Club will only go to players in the 10 major league sports.

Mark’s out

Deputy Editor Mark Coleman is burning a new path out of Life & Style.

Coleman, a British journalist who has worked under four editors at Life & Style – is now bailing out of the struggling celebrity magazine and returning to London to be the online showbiz editor of the Daily Mail.

keith.kelly@nypost.com