BENAZIR Bhutto, the former and likely future prime minister of Pakistan, has snagged a book deal with HarperCollins, believed to be worth $500,000.
“Pakistan is an increasingly volatile place, and Bhutto’s book is an eye-opening look at the mistakes we’ve made in the region and what we can do to correct them – as well as what the consequences will be if we don’t,” said HarperCollins Executive Editor Tim Duggan.
“It’s the kind of book that can actually have an impact on how events unfold in the Middle East and beyond,” Duggan predicted
(Harper Collins is the book publishing division of News Corp. which also owns The Post.)
Duggan said he bought the book proposal after hearing the exiled former Pakistani leader deliver an address at the Council on Foreign Relations.
The book was represented by Andrew Wylie, the agent known as The Jackal.
Bhutto, who had an op-ed piece in yesterday’s Washington Post entitled, “When I Return to Pakistan,” has been living in exile since 1999, while heading the Pakistan People’s Party.
She served as Pakistan’s prime minister from 1988 to 1990 and from 1993 to 1996.
“The fight against extremism requires a national effort that can only flow from legitimate elections,” she wrote in her op-ed piece.
Duggan said the book, which is expected to be out in the spring, is to be called “Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West,” and will be part memoir and part political treatise.
Westward ho!
Portfolio Editor-in-Chief Joanne Lipman yesterday morning had breakfast with Condé Nast Chairman S.I. Newhouse Jr. and by mid-afternoon there was a new managing editor at Portfolio – plucked from The New Yorker.
The new man on the scene is Jacob Lewis, a 14-year veteran of The New Yorker, who will become Portfolio’s managing editor.
Meanwhile, Blaise Zerega has worked out a deal to go to San Francisco for Portfolio and become a new deputy editor – at least on paper – filling a masthead spot that has been vacant since August, when Lipman fired Jim Impoco.
Said one source: “He’s being called deputy but it doesn’t look like he will have any serious management responsibilities. Have you ever heard of a deputy 3,000 miles away?”
Zerega was the first person Lipman hired shortly after she joined Condé Nast from The Wall Street Journal.
It seemed to be a shrewd move, since Zerega had been an editor-in-chief of Red Herring and at the time of his Portfolio hire was working as the managing editor of Wired magazine.
Some Lipman critics said Zerega’s move now, as the fourth issue gets ready to close, is another in an increasingly long line of people who have grown disenchanted with the chaos surrounding the magazine’s launch.
Lipman, not surprisingly, is moving to shoot down any tales of staff unrest.
“It’s nothing but good news,” she said, adding that Zerega will focus on “special projects, tech coverage and the Web.”
Off the list
Not everyone who was spared in the Business 2.0 meltdown is going to Fortune.
Erick Schonfeld, who was an editor-at-large based in New York, has decided to end his 14-year career and jump to Michael Arrington‘s influential blog, TechCrunch.
“It’s true,” said Schonfeld, “I’ve accepted a position to be co-editor at TechCrunch.”
“There was a ‘Schindler’s List’ [of Business 2.0 staffers who would be spared] at one point, but I took my name off it so I’d be eligible for a severance package,” he said.
New boss
Mimi Valdes, the one-time editor-in-chief of Vibe, is going to be the new editor-in-chief of Latina magazine, replacing Betty Cortina, who is said to be hammering out an exit package.
Valdes’ mandate will be to try to bring in more fashion, beauty, music and pop culture.
Valdes’ arrival follows that of Cindy Lewis, a Hearst veteran who had been the publisher of the now-defunct Shop Etc., who was recently installed as the new president of Latina.
The magazine has been able to take advantage of the rapid growth in the number of Hispanics in this country, posting an 18.5 percent paid-and-verified circulation increase in the first half to 484,445, thanks in part to a rock-bottom cover price of $1.99.
However, after selling 1,000 ad pages last year, it looks like it’s falling dramatically short this year. In the first half, its ad pages dropped 13.4 percent to 403.5.