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News
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1. Wall Street Journal
Questions for… Jann S. Wenner
By Brian Steinberg
04/12/06
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB114479309675923353-_BaP7mS2BLV9Ts5u_Z5rrN3KZVM_20060418.html?mod=blogs

Long considered a maverick in magazine-industry circles, Jann S. Wenner has a message for his peers who are trying to figure out how to link their paper-and-ink publications to digital media: Don't forget the printed page.

Stunning images, carefully chosen words and slick paper have worked well for Mr. Wenner, 60 years old. In 1967, when he was just 20, he dropped out of the University of California, Berkeley, to start a rock-music biweekly known as Rolling Stone. After a few decades -- and publishing authors such as Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolfe, the magazine has become one of the industry's best known. His company, Wenner Media, also publishes Men's Journal and Us, which is in the midst of a heated newsstand battle for lovers of celebrity gossip. One person familiar with the matter puts Wenner Media's value at between $600 million and $900 million.

To be sure, Mr. Wenner hasn't been ignoring the Web. His company expects to unveil a new site for Us in coming months. But he makes plain that the Internet alone won't save the magazine business. Below, he talks about changes in the magazine industry, hints at succession issues at Wenner Media, and predicts a shake-up in the celebrity-magazine category.

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The Feds yesterday arrested two young Wall Streeters and a mole at a Business Week print shop for running a trans-Atlantic insider trading scam that enlisted investment bank colleagues and a stripper to rack up $6.7 million in ill-gotten gains.

Authorities said Goldman Sachs analyst Eugene Plotkin, 26, Merrill Lynch banker Stanislav Shpigelman, 23, and a former colleague plotted to pilfer the markets using information about pending mergers leaked by the young banker and buying stocks based on tips gleaned from stolen prepublication copies of Business Week's "Inside Wall Street" column.

The scheme's ringleaders also tried to recruit exotic dancers to pry confidential merger information out of unsuspecting bankers and helped prospective fraudsters get jobs at investment banks, federal investigators said at a press conference outlining their complaint.

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There is mounting speculation within Cond? Nast that chief executive officer Charles Townsend is planning a publisher shuffle when he gets back from vacation next week. The reorg, if it happens, will likely open up a job for the currently homeless Lance Ford, an old crony of media group president Richard Beckman, who was publisher of Cargo until it folded last month.

While Cargo's other employees were either swiftly placed elsewhere within the company or let go, in a highly generous arrangement for Cond? Nast, Ford and his assistant were allowed to keep their office space at 4 Times Square for 30 days. "They've got him on ice," said one publisher. "We have always said Lance was going to remain here for a few weeks to close out certain contracts with regard to Cargo," a company spokeswoman said. "Our publisher roster is filled. There is not a publisher opportunity for him at this time."

However, that could certainly change in a month's time. The two possibilities circulating within Cond? Nast have Ford going to either GQ or Gourmet. In the latter scenario, Gourmet publisher Giulio Capua would be offered the GQ job, with GQ publisher Pete Hunsinger possibly returning to Vanity Fair. Hunsinger and Vanity Fair editor in chief Graydon Carter had lunch together in mid-February, after Carter was unable to make Hunsinger's anniversary party marking his 25 years at Cond? Nast. And employees on the publishing side at Vanity Fair have evidently been telling colleagues they've heard "there will be a change on the floor when Chuck [Townsend] gets back from vacation."

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As ctia's (Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association) big wireless fest dialed up in Las Vegas last week, the New York magazine world was also phoning in significant mobile developments. One early adopter of mobile technology for magazines is Dennis Publishing's rumored-for-sale Maxim flagship.

Maxim's May "number" will be the "Mobile Issue," with editorial, advertising, and cross-platform executions aimed at the cell phones that group publisher Rob Gregory says complement the first--and biggest--"lad" magazine. "The way we look at this is that our audience hasMaximin one hand and the cell phone in the other hand." The two hands come together in May as the Ed Needham-led Maxim editorial staff renames the letters section The Eye and invites readers to submit their phone cam shots and text messages to the monthly mix. Editorial bugs throughout the issue will prompt readers to text message their own strange stories, engage in polls and enter sweepstakes.

Gregory was a bit surprised that advertisers were not quite ready for mobile crossover promotions. Though the May Maxim gets spreads from Jeep, Kraft, Cingular, and Samsung that involve interaction with the readers via short codes, Gregory generally found more curiosity than commitment. "We found that almost every big brand is interested in this now but almost no one is ready to do…or knows how to do it," he says. But by bringing his huge audience of heavily unwired readers to clients, Gregory set the stage for much more ambitious print-to-mobile ad placements in the second half of the year.

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Date is one day after the midterm elections, and, per U.S. News & World Report columnist/CBS News commentator Gloria Borger, it will approximately be when President Bush names a new Treasury secretary. Appearing on the syndicated Chris Matthews Show (April 2), Borger predicted that Time Warner chairman/president/ceo (since January 2002) Parsons and Goldman Sachs chairman/ceo (since May 1999) Hank Paulson, Jr., are the favorites to succeed John Snow, whom she believes will a job casualty in the aftermath of Josh Bolten succeeding Andrew Card as White House chief of staff. Both Parsons and Paulson would take quite a pay cut: from $10 million-plus in their present capacities to a Cabinet member's salary of $175,700.

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