CONDE Nast CEO Steve Florio is playing Scrooge this holiday season.
In a series of memos that went out just before Thanksgiving, he clamped down on executives’ expensive gifts to each other and curtailed employees’ rights to charge big lunches to their expense accounts when work keeps them at their desks.
From now on, any in-office lunches that are expensed must have food and beverages purchased from the makeshift deli run by Restaurant Associates on the 22nd floor.
The deli is serving as the cafeteria because the $20 million cafeteria, with titanium walls designed by Frank Gehry , is still months away from completion. Originally, the cafeteria was set to open in January — now it won’t open til some time in the spring — even though the Conde Nast magazines completed their move into the Times Square Tower by the end of last summer.
“Maybe they’re still waiting for the titanium to come in,” quipped one insider, referring to the $500 million building’s cafeteria. Florio also told all the top editors and publishers to watch what they spend on their Christmas gifts to one another on the expense accounts and he warned them to operate within budgets.
“It’s hilarious that the president of the company would send these memos,” said one insider. “It’s almost as if he’s saying to the world, ‘I’m still here.'”
Add Bob Johnson’sBET Holdings to the listof potential suitors for Miller Publishing’s music magazines Vibe, Spin and Blaze, according to industry sources.
BET, owner of Black Entertainment Television, also owns three magazines: Heart & Soul, Emerge and BET Weekend, a Sunday magazine insert.
BET officials could not be reached for comment.
A major bidding war is shaping up. Viacom, Time Warner, Jann Wenner and former Vibe publisher Keith Clinskscales are all reportedly interested.
The book world percolated to life in a frenzied auction for Andrew Carroll’s tome “Battlelines”–a collection of letters from people caught up in our nation’s wars — from the American Revolution to the Persian Gulf.
Simon & Schuster’s Scribner and Pocket Books units teamed up with an estimated $550,000, besting nine other bidders.
Underbidders were Henry Holt and Broadway, a unit of Random House Inc.
“The letters are stirring, eleoquent, heartbreaking,” says Susan Moldow, vice president and publisher at Scribner, which won the hardcover rights. Pocket Books’ Washington Square Press will put out the paperback. Carroll, only 30, developed a penchant for collecting letters when a family home burned. “He found that the thing he missed most was the letters,” says Moldow.
Interest was sky-high this time around because his previous collection, “Letters of a Nation” was a surprise hit for the tiny Kodansha Press.
Carroll has a virtual treasure trove of wartime material thanks to an enthusiatic pitch from Abagail Van Buren in her Dear Abby advice column. More than 7,000 letters reached Carroll.
The hardcover book is due out in spring 2001.
Former Glamour publisher Mary Berner is moving around a lot more than desks in her new role as CEO of the Newhouse family’s latest buy, Fairchild Publications.
Stephanie George, the executive vice president of Fairchild, was just named to the newly created post of president of Woman’s Wear Daily. George was the launch publisher of highly regarded fashion magazine W — and at one time was rumored to be a potential successor to Michael Coady as president while she rose through the Fairchild ranks.
Now she appears to have been relegated back to one title — but she does get to hang her hat at the company flagship.
In a politically shrewd move, George offered to give up her spacious fifth-floor office to Berner as soon as Berner arrived at the 34th Street Fairchild offices, just over three weeks ago. Berner declined the offer, insiders said.
Bumped aside in the shuffle is Ralph Erady, who was the publisher of WWD. He’s being moved to the sleepy trade title Home Furnishings News.
The publisher of Jane, Lorin Litner moves to W as publisher, replacing Lynnette Harrison, who follows George to WWD.
Berner reached into Conde Nast to make Glamour advertising director Eva Dillon the new publisher of Jane.
Berner did not return calls by presstime but insiders say the moves are expected to be formally announced today.