European Publishers Hachette, G&J, and Bauer Boost American Presence

They’re back! Europeans publishers, some of whom made a foray into the American market several years ago, are once again returning to our shores, encouraged by the uptick in magazine advertising and the weak American dollar.Richard Desmond, the British billionaire, announced he will launch an American edition of OK!, yet another weekly celebrity magazine, probably by December. The editor will be Nicola McCarthy, a Brit, who has been working in New York for several months as US Weekly’s executive editor.Mr. Desmond, a more colorful character than most American publishers, built his fortune in Britain on Asian Babes and other skin magazines, which he subsequently sold. He now owns two national newspapers, the London Daily Express and the Daily Star. Last year, when he was attempting to buy the London Telegraph, he tried to discourage a competitive bid from a German newspaper group by goose-stepping into the Telegraph’s conference room and suggesting that Telegraph executives might learn to sing “Das Lied der Deutschen,” with its famous “Deutschland, Deutschland uber alles” verse, Germany’s prewar national anthem. A joke that didn’t go down well at all.The French publisher Hachette Fili pacchi, which publishes Women’s Day, Elle, Elle Decor, and Metropolitan Home, is also starting some new American magazines. First of all, Elle Accessories, a single-subject, newsstand-only publication with a rate base of 400,000, is planned for August. More single-subject magazines under the Elle franchise are planned. Hachette is also testing an American version of Red, a British magazine for women in their 30s. Wonder how Hearst’s Redbook, a long-established magazine for women in their 30s, feels about that?German publishers Gruner & Jahr and Bauer, which have been in this country for about a decade, have met with varying results. Currently, Bauer, which owns two down-market women’s magazines, First for Women and Woman’s World, is riding high with the success of In Touch, a celebrity weekly that has a lower cover price than its competitors and has been selling a million copies a week. They have also scored with Life & Style Weekly, a photo-intensive take on readers’ celebrity obsession.But Gruner & Jahr, the publishers of Family Circle, Parents, and Fitness, have had to address a series of escalating woes. Besides a much-publicized court battle with Rosie O’Donnell over Rosie, which was G&J’s unsuccessful attempt to make over and revitalize Mc Call’s Magazine, the publisher recently had to restate the circulation of many of its magazines. Most of G&J’s publications may not make rate base for 2004, which means rebates to advertisers that could cost the company $10 million.Still, European publishers aren’t discouraged. There have even been reports that Italian Prime Minister and publishing magnate Silvio Berlusconi is eyeing the American market.***Stephen Shepard’s last issue as editor in chief of Business Week will be released on February 24. Mr. Shepard has been the magazine’s editor for more than 20 years and has overseen, he said, “about 1,040 issues.” A highly regarded editor, he is leaving to become dean of the City University of New York School of Journalism, which will open in 2006. Business Week won six National Magazine Awards while he was editor, and Mr. Shepard won business journalism’s Gerald Loeb Award and was inducted into the American Society of Magazine Editors Hall of Fame in 1999.We are old friends and talked about what he will miss about being an editor. “The stories, of course, and the rhythm of a weekly, of knowing I have to work late on Tuesday night and that Wednesday is always a frantic day,” he said. We spoke on a typically frantic Wednesday when the news that Carly Fiorina had just been ousted as head of Hewlett-Packard broke. “That may be the cover story next week,” he said. “I’ll know by tonight.”What’s changed in the last 20 years? “Practically everything. Nowadays, everything is an international story because we are in a global economy. And nowadays, we have an Asian and European edition of Business Week as well as increasingly important online edition. That means we do daily reporting.”Although he said there were many stories of which he was proud, there are two that he feels especially good about. One involved Banker’s Trust and was “gagged” by a court order just before it was printed. “But we appealed and won on appeal,” he said, and the six-column feature turned into an award-winning cover story. “It was considered the most important freedom-of-speech case since the Pentagon Papers.” The other was “The Mob on Wall Street.” “I have a framed letter in my office from FBI Director Louis Freeh, who wrote that the article led to convictions.”What were Mr. Shepard’s best sellers? “Those end of-year issues that tell you about investing, anything that tells you how to get rich. That’s Business Week’s version of ‘Thin Thighs in 30 Days.'”A former deputy editor of the Wall Street Journal and the editorial director of its online edition, Stephen J. Adler, becomes Business Week’s editor on April 1. And this week one of Business Week’s competitors, Fortune, announced a new editor. The managing editor for Time in Europe, Eric Poole, will replace Ric Kirkland, who has been Fortune’s editor for four years.***Just in time for Valentine’s Day is the premiere issue of a magazine about relationships called Tango. The founder and chief executive is Andrea Miller, who was a financial analyst for Enron and says she “escaped just in time to go to business school.” She got a taste for publishing at Columbia University, where she was managing editor of the business school’s newspaper. Tango, backed, appropriately enough, by “angel” investors will come out four times this year and has a rate base of 100,000. The magazine’s editor is a former executive editor at Vanity Fair, Elise O’Shaughnessy.“I got the idea for magazine when my fiance and I were reading Thomas Moore ‘Soulmates’ and I thought, this book is so great it ought to be serialized, ” Ms. Miller said. “But there was no magazine where it could be serialized. There are armloads of magazines about shopping, but there is no magazine about love. I knew there had to be one that dealt with relationships.”One feature in the first issue is about America’s most romantic cities – and, yes, New York makes the cut. Some Tango suggestions to make the most of romantic New York “Meet: Between the lions on the steps of the Public Library. Fight: On a subway platform. Don’t be surprised if bystanders offer you loose change for your performance. Have sex: In the backseat of a cab. Or between stops on the G train. If you dare.”Tango’s suggestions seem to be trying to prove H.L. Mencken’s observation that love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.

European Publishers Hachette, G&J, and Bauer Boost American Presence

European Publishers Hachette, G&J, and Bauer Boost American Presence

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