MOST major media companies are scaling back on launch plans next year, with one “shocking” exception.
Paris-based Lagardere Group – parent company of Hachette Filipacchi Media US Inc. – is hard at work on Shock, a new men’s magazine.
The intent, apparently, is to provoke shock and awe with crash photos from car wrecks and pictures of amazing medical procedures.
Choc, a French version, is said to be thriving. Hachette is home to such macho standards as Road & Track and Car and Driver, but it also has some cozy titles like Woman’s Day. In the fashion world, it has Elle and little sister Elle Girl.
Mike Hammer is said to have been brought in to work as the launch editor of Shock, under the supervision of Peter Herbst.
Herbst, a Hachette editor, is said to be very close to the parent company – in part due to his ability to speak fluent French.
Hammer had been editor-in-chief of Stuff, but British press baron Felix Dennis decided in May not to renew the contract of the longtime veteran of Dennis Publishing, as the lad category was hit with circulation challenges.
Hammer then worked briefly with Keith Blanchard, another ex-Dennis Publishing vet, trying to develop a lad magazine for Hearst called Bullet. But that project was put on the back burner by Hearst President Cathie Black last summer.
Blanchard eventually wandered off to Bauer Publications to work on a top secret magazine project and Hammer shortly thereafter landed at Hachette.
Nobody at Hachette was commenting on Shock – not even Jack Kliger, the president and CEO, who would certainly like to expand the portfolio here.
Kliger had earlier tried to import Red, the U.K. women’s mag, to these shores as an edgy fashion and lifestyle title, but it had only one issue and has not resurfaced.
If the Shock project is greenlighted, it could be the biggest launch since the company backed the late John F. Kennedy, Jr., and his George magazine.
That happened when American Media CEO David Pecker was running Hachette. Kliger inherited George and shut it down some months after the death of the former president’s son.
Snooze No. 2
With his executive ranks depleted, Daily News owner Mort Zuckerman is looking outside for new talent.
The rumor is that Zuckerman is trying to bring in a CEO and is in final talks with Marc Kramer, currently a senior vice president for circulation at The New York Times, who joined the Gray Lady in 1993 from the Daily News.
Earlier this week, Les Goodstein, the Daily News president and chief operating officer, sent shock waves through the beleaguered paper when he announced he was moving to News Corp., parent company of the New York Post, to become an executive vice president.
Technically, the CEO slot has been vacant since longtime Zuckerman ally Fred “The Duck Slayer” Drasner – who also served as the Snooze copublisher – pulled out and began liquidating many of his holdings in the New York region.
But Drasner in latter years was an absentee executive, with little day-to-day input. Shortly after the Drasner exit, Martin Krall, the senior vice president and chief legal counsel, also left.
Times exec Kramer is a lawyer by training. He had worked at the News when it was owned by Tribune Co. and then by the late British media tycoon Robert Maxwell.
Over the past year and a half, other senior vice presidents have departed the Snooze, including chief flack Ken Frydman and veteran ad sales leader Francine Frede. Frede took a buyout in one of Mort’s periodic downsizings.
Kramer and the News declined to comment.
Presumably, one of the new CEO’s jobs would be to rustle up someone who can sell ads.
The News circulation has tumbled to its lowest level since the 1920s, according to the most recent publishers’ statement from the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
Even so, one former staffer wondered if Zuckerman was putting his focus on the right spot by bringing in a circulation veteran and a lawyer.
“The first thing they have to worry about is losing ads out the back door. [Goodstein] knows the hot button of every advertiser,” the source told Media Ink.
“[Goodstein] is an encyclopedia of major advertisers in the city, he knows their kids and their grandchildren.
“It’s a mortal blow for Mort,” the source add of the loss of Goodstein. “It should cause him to pull out what remains of his hair.”