IT’S now getting personal between Rachael Ray and Martha Stewart.
Every Day with Rachael Ray has finally landed a new publisher for the magazine, filling a post that’s been vacant since Chris Guilfoyle jumped to Condé Nast-owned Women’s Wear Daily.
The new publisher is Anne Balaban, who was raided from Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, where she had been publisher of that company’s Everyday Food title.
Everyday Food was hatched two years ago without Stewart’s name attached to the title, as the doyenne of domesticity was heading to the slammer for lying to federal investigators about a suspicious sale of ImClone Systems stock. At the time, company officials worried the home entertainment diva’s name might be a bit tainted.
The digest-sized Everyday Food has turned out to be a fairly successful launch aimed at a more mass market than the upscale Martha Stewart Living flagship.
“I’m thrilled that she accepted the offer,” said Ray. “I think we found exactly the right person.”
Ray may still have to quell some problems in the trenches of her magazine, however.
One insider grumbled that Ray, who has two TV shows and tends to have a half-dozen projects underway at any one time, ducked out of an off-site meeting a few weeks ago that the editorial staffers wanted her to lead.
The editorial staffers were said to be crestfallen that their leader, who is seldom seen at the magazine, missed the meeting.
“She’s hardly ever in the office,” said one person.
Ray herself doesn’t deny it.
“That’s true,” she said. “I wish I could spend more time at all my jobs, but the [meeting] was set up on a three-show day and we moved it to a two-show day and had it about 10 days later.”
While she writes the editor’s notes and recipes and consults with Suzanne Grimes, president of food and entertaining at parent Readers Digest Association, and editor-in-chief Silvana Nardone on a daily basis, Ray said she doesn’t want to be in on every decision.
“It doesn’t have to be all about me,” she said. “It’s all about the idea that you don’t have to be rich to live the rich life.”
But there is no denying the fast start that the magazine has had, even though it was forced to delay the recent rate base increase and roll back its cover price by a dollar after encountering price resistance.
RDA folks say that the price cut is helping to build newsstand sales again over the past three months, where it has outsold Everyday Food.
Every Day with Rachael Ray is going to jump its circulation to 1.7 million from 1.5 million in February, following through with a plan that was originally scheduled for this fall.
“We just slowed down the rollout because we were growing so quickly,” said Grimes.
Deja Vu
A photo of a bikini-clad beauty on a beach in Mexico that graced the November 2006 cover of Travel + Leisure has turned up 11 months later on the cover of the October 2007 of the British version of Condé Nast Traveller.
“It’s pretty wild,” said Nancy Novogrod, editor-in-chief of the American Express Publishing-owned Travel + Leisure. “I’m kind of stunned.”
The photo of model Janelle Fishman was taken by noted lensman Martin Morrell.
Technically, there’s nothing illegal about the duplication, but it does seem an odd endorsement of T+L’s cover, especially since T+L competes tooth-and-nail with Condé Nast Traveler, the American version of the travel mag.
And it’s not exactly a friendly rivalry.
“The surprising thing is they wanted to use one of our covers rather than their own sister publication,” Novogrod said.
Normally, Novogrod said, there is a one-year embargo on shopping a photo somewhere else, but in this case the photographer’s agent asked for – and was granted – an exemption.
“It’s not his fault,” Novogrod said of Morrell. “He didn’t pull a fast one. I doubt he proposed using it for the cover, but there it landed.”
A spokeswoman at Condé Nast in New York referred calls to her counterpart in Britain, who could not be reached for comment at presstime.
Poor Joanne
Ever since the third issue of Portfolio hit the newsstands, we’ve been hearing rumblings that a story on former AIG chief Maurice “Hank” Greenberg by CNBC correspondent Charlie Gasparino was imminent.
However, the piece had been delayed by a heavy dose of editing brought on in part, according to Portfolio insiders, by Portfolio Editor-in-Chief Joanne Lipman, who has been stung by criticism that her first few issues were too soft.
Lipman apparently wanted harder-hitting copy for the magazine and didn’t think a story on Greenberg fit the bill.
“She regarded him [Greenberg] as an aging, toothless old man,” said one insider.
She might now wish she had reconsidered.
Gasparino – who admits he was late in filing a first draft of the story – grew so frustrated by Portfolio’s editing process that he pulled the story and sold it to Forbes, which will publish the article in its Nov. 26 issue, which hits newsstands tomorrow.
“I pulled it because the editing process – I never had an experience like this. It was borderline demeaning,” Gasparino said.
The story passed from the hands of Michael Caruso, the recently departed contributing editor-at-large whose contract was not renewed, to Managing Editor Blaise Zerega and finally to Senior Editor Kyle Pope. What’s more, Gasparino was also aggravated by the decidedly hard spin that Lipman wanted the story to have on Greenberg.
Greenberg was forced out of AIG in March 2005 amid allega tions of fraud by then-Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. How ever, as Gasparino points out, Greenberg has yet to be indicted on any charges. More recently, Greenberg has indicated that he could use his significant AIG holdings to bring about change at the insurance giant.
Elsewhere, Lipman on Monday lost another top editor when Senior Editor Brendan Vaughan resigned. He is going to Hearst’s Esquire to work on coordinating the 75th anniversary issue of the men’s magazine that is slated for next October.
Friends said that Vaughan was growing disenchanted because Lipman’s approach was too formulaic and that he wasn’t able to do the kind of risky, groundbreaking journalism he wanted.
Interestingly, the Esquire pro- ject lasts only until the issue hits late next year, which means he’s leaving a well paying full-time gig for one that will come to an end in about eight months.
Final bow
Have we seen the last book party ever at the Forbes headquarters?
On Monday evening, Forbes Chairman Steve Forbes tossed a book party in the Forbes Gallery of Forbes Media’s Greenwich Village offices for David Andelman’s new book “Shattered Peace.” The book is about how missteps after World War I are still being played out around the world today, including in Iraq.
The gallery, which was once packed with everything from Fabergé eggs collected by the late Malcom Forbes to letters from Abraham Lincoln, was looking a little bare, as many of the items once there have long since been sold off.
Recently, the building went on the block and bids are supposedly being mulled. Steve Forbes said the company put the building up for sale because it has outgrown the space.
The Forbes family is hoping to fetch close to $140 million for the nine-story building, but plans to hang on to the attached townhouse out back on East 12th Street.