Newsweek’s new owner, Sidney Harman, now calls the fruitless merger talks involving Barry Diller, Tina Brown and The Daily Beast an “unfortunate dalliance” while he concedes that he is nowhere close to finding a permanent editor-in-chief.
The search is taking on new urgency because the acting co-editors — former Managing Editor Dan Klaidman and former Foreign Editor Nisid Hajari — who have been running the magazine since the departure of Editor-in-Chief Jon Meacham in late August, are short-timers. Their contracts expire at year’s end.
Harman isn’t close to finding a permanent replacement for Meacham, who has landed as an editor at Random House.
“We are not at a point where I have a final candidate or two,” Harman conceded to Media Ink, “but hopefully it will come to a conclusion before the end of the month.”
Originally, Harman had said he wanted to wrap it up by early November. He closed on the deal to buy the magazine for $1 from the Washington Post Company in September.
Newsmax
Newsmax magazine, the fast-growing right-leaning news monthly, is hiring Ken Chandler to be the new editor-in-chief.
Chandler, who will be based in New York, will be taking over editing responsibilities from company founder Christopher Ruddy, who started Newsmax Media 12 years ago and is now making money with his Web site aimed at the Republican heartland, especially in the 50-plus bracket, and with the fast-growing magazine.
In the six months ended June 30, the magazine was one of the fastest-growing in the country, with paid circulation up 92 percent to 181,985. Chandler said the magazine’s circulation has since grown to 300,000.
“My role will be to significantly expand the New York office,” said Chandler, a former editor-in-chief of The Post and a former editorial director of the Boston Herald, who was most recently running a crisis management p.r. firm, Chandler Media.
Ruddy had previously told The Post he planned to spend $2 million on editorial expansion over an 18-month period, with new hires primarily in New York and Washington.
New THR
The new Hollywood Reporter hits newsstands today with Editorial Director Janice Min, the former top editor at Us Weekly, sweeping out the old and hopefully jumpstarting the new.
There is little doubt that the 80-year-old trade magazine had fallen on hard times under Nielsen Business Media, but it still commanded daily paid circulation of about 45,000.
Now, the gamble is that the trade can be remade by scrapping its daily print edition and relaunching as a glossy weekly with a circulation of 72,000, coupled with a Web site that was redesigned in mid-October.
The five-day-a-week print version appeared for the last time on Friday. On Monday, subscribers who pay $249 a year started getting a daily version, which they could read on screen or print out. For its debut issue, there are 70 ad pages.
“It’s the highest revenue issue in the history of The Reporter,” said Richard “Mad Dog” Beckman, the CEO of Prometheus Global Media, which took over in late December with backing from Guggenheim Partners, and money from The Hill owner Jimmy Finkelstein and George Green, the former president of Hearst Magazines International.
The masthead under Min has seen a fair amount of churn at the top. In recent weeks, Editor-in-Chief Elizabeth Guider and the dot.com editor, Andrew Wallenstein, both exited.
Min has added several new faces to the masthead: Matthew Belloni was promoted to news editor, while Marisa Guthrie joins as a television senior writer from Broadcasting & Cable. Shirley Halperin, an ex-Entertainment Weekly writer most recently attached to the Los Angeles Times, joins as music editor. Merle Ginsberg, formerly of W and author of “Confessions of an Heiress,” will revive the “Rambling Reporter” column for the new weekly.
Variety is also trying to shake things up in its ranks, especially now that its younger rival has eclipsed it on the Web and newer competitors such as Sharon Waxman‘s The Wrap and Nikki Finke‘s Deadline Hollywood have eroded its position as the dominant Hollywood chronicler.
On Monday, Leo Wolinsky, who was hired after a 30-year career with the Los Angeles Times to run Daily Vari ety last Decem ber, was un ceremoniously let go. He ap parently is not going to be replaced.
Insiders said that Cyn thia Littleton and Brian Cochrane are going to jointly run the daily side of operations. A Variety spokeswoman declined to comment. kkelly@nypost.com