Archives: April 2008

Too slow to catch all of tonight’s updates in the scrolling feed in your right-hand column here, chronicling the ins and outs of this evening’s pre-National Magazine Awards reception for the 2008 nominees? Get all the reverse-chronological glory in the continuous FBNY Twitter feed, and be sure to check back tomorrow for pics from tonight, and more Ellies madness in real time as we liveblog the awards proper…

Create a social media strategy, launch your campaign, and track the results in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. The online event and workshop will feature speakers including The Onion‘s Baratunde Thurston (left), Facebook’s Morin Oluwole, and bitly’s Tim Devane. Register now.

— DIANE CLEHANE

Had we stopped by on Monday we would have seen Anjelica Huston (Love you on Medium!) Oh well. This week Hollywood on the Hudson was strictly a downtown affair as it seems all those Tinseltown types were staying busy with the Tribeca Film Festival. Today’s crowd at Michael’s was the usual mix of movers and shakers with one MIA mogul (Welcome back, Ron!) resurfacing after an extended absence.

I was joined at the bar by my long time pal Kathryn Leigh Scott who was in town from Los Angeles on her way to London. Kathryn and I met back when I doing a piece for TV Guide about NBC’s short-lived nighttime version of the ABC daytime cult classic Dark Shadows created by the late, great Dan Curtis back in the (gasp!) late sixties. I might be dating myself a bit, but I was totally obsessed with the show — and its lead actress, none other than Kathryn — when I was an impressionable youngster who rushed home every day from school to watch the gothic soap that introduced vampires and werewolves and other creatures that went bump in the night to a generation of fans.

These days the absolutely ageless Kathryn, having sold her incredibly successful imprint Pomegranate Press which published countless tomes on Dark Shadows and other pop cultural touchstones, is concentrating her considerable talents on writing fiction. Her first novel, Murder in Primetime, was a hit and now she’s hard at work on her next thriller. But Dark Shadows remains a big part of her busy life. Tomorrow she departs for the UK to do three new recordings of new material based on the show for Big Picture. The project is timed to DS‘s 40th (!) anniversary.

Kathryn has also sent none other than Johnny Depp the complete collection of her DS books as primer for him to study as he prepares to sink his teeth into the role of vampire Barnabas Collins for the feature film version of the show. Turns out Johnny is a long time fan — something Kathryn first discovered when she worked with the Oscar nominee on 21 Jump Street back in his teen idol days. “To have everything come full circle and see Johnny do this is marvelous!” We can’t wait!

I was happy to introduce Kathryn to my pal People‘s East Coast news editor Liz McNeil, who was lunching with staff writer Nina Burleigh (another rabid Dark Shadows fan!) and attorney Suzanne Kimberly Bracker. Turns out Suzanne is something of an expert on celeb divorces. Who could these gals have been talking about over lunch? The list is long, don’t you think? Talk about great dish!

Here’s a rundown on today’s crowd:

1. The Imber Gang: Gerry Imber, Jerry Della Femina, Jeff Greenfield and the gang. Just asking, but is Fox News’ Monica Crawley breaking into this ole boys’ network? This is the second time we’ve spotted the blonde beauty lunching with these formidable fellows…

2. Peter Brown and, we’re told, a lady “ambassador” of some import.

3. Hallmark honcho Henry Schleiff with Steve Scheffer and John Redpath.

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Time Inc. EVP John Squires shows off his new hairdo

Earlier today in the Luce Room of the Time Life Building, we caught the Time Inc. Digital Showcase, detailing the Web successes of InStyle, Sports Illustrated and CNNMoney.com. All three brands have enjoyed record traffic but the talk of the day was InStyle.com’s Hollywood Hair tool, which allows users to see themselves in the hairstyle of their favorite celeb. In the past five months, 1.69 million women have uploaded their photos, totaling 40 million individual try-ons. Even EVP John Spiers got into the act (see picture).

During the Sports Illustrated segment of the presentation, SI.com managing editor Paul Fichtenbaum discussed the runaway success of the SI Vault. He anticipated getting 500,000 unique visitors in the first month (3/20-4/20), but the site received 1.7 million. It’s been four years in the making, so we’re glad the portal’s a hit.

During the Q&A, Spiers revealed that SI gets 15 percent of its revenue for digital and this number should increase to 20-30 percent. He thinks that soon all of Time Inc.’s brands will follow this same model.

(If you’re interested, TVNewser has more on the CNNMoney.com front.)

Among other worthy tidbits:

Real Simple‘s Web site will relaunch this fall

CNNMoney.com has almost 20 million video streams a month

Keith Kelly got up to get coffee during the brief Q&A session

TV Guide, whose sale to Macrovision was completed last night, laid off nine editorial staffers including editor-in-chief Ian Birch, managing editor Lois Draegin and Steve Sonsky, an executive editor based in Radnor, PA. Consuela Golden, the magazine’s assistant managing editor, confirmed the news to FishbowlNY this afternoon.

Tip us if you hear anything.

Ok, so he was joking… Last night’s panel, from left: Maxim editorial director Jim Kaminsky, Details EIC Dan Peres, Playboy EIC Chris Napolitano, Elle executive editor Alexandra Postman, Glamour EIC Cindi Leive and Marie Claire EIC Joanna Coles

In what felt to many like an Ellies week amuse-bouche, 118 senior-level men’s and women’s magazine editors converged upon Twenty Four Fifth last night for mediabistro.com’s first-ever joint men’s and women’s magazine dinner, “Skirts, Slacks, and Supper.” Despite the fact that we were elbow-rubbing with the same people who by Friday we’ll be seeing in our bleary-eyed, blog-posting waking nightmares, spirited conversation quickly became the order of the evening, particularly in a post-meal panel featuring Details EIC Dan Peres, Maxim editorial director Jim Kaminsky, Playboy EIC Chris Napolitano, Elle executive editor Alexandra Postman, Glamour EIC Cindi Leive and Marie Claire EIC Joanna Coles.

Here are some choice bits from them on the differences between editing men’s and women’s mags, how their political coverage differs, the advent of celeb culture, and what the hell to do about the Internet…

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As expected, David Willey, senior vice president of Rodale, was elected president of the American Society of Magazine Editors today at the annual ASME luncheon. He replaces outgoing president Cindi Leive. Willey, who is the editor-in-chief of Runner’s World and the editorial director of Running Times, is the first ASME president based outside of New York in more than a decade.

Elle EIC Roberta Myers will serve another term as vice president, while New York‘s Adam Moss and Self‘s Lucy Danziger get one more year as secretary and treasurer, respectively.

Joining the board for two-year terms are Larry Hackett, managing editor of People, James B. Meigs, EIC of Popular Mechanics, and Ladies’ Home Journal‘s Diane Salvatore.

Full release after the jump.

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National Geographic Channel overhauls its website, CBS rakes in the March Madness revenue and MySpace users show off their talent. Here’s Julie Ann Sageer with today’s Daily Angle.

For all you writers looking for a near surefire way to make the list of finalists for next year’s National Magazine Awards, here’s a tip: Try spelling your name, W-I-L-L-I-A-M L-A-N-G-E-W-I-E-S-C-H-E.

For the 10th straight year in a row, the former Atlantic scribe and current Vanity Fair international correspondent has been nominated for a coveted Ellie — this time in the Reporting category for his “City of Fear” piece on how a Brazilian prison gang took control of Sao Paulo. Those of you keeping score at home will know that William Langewiesche has been nominated a total of 11 times in the 18 years he’s been writing for the big boys. And unlike Susan Lucci (remember her 18 years of watching fellow Daytime Emmy acting nominees prance up to the podium?), Langewiesche has actually nabbed the prized honor — twice.

So how does he do it? We cozied up to some of our favorite magazine cognoscenti to get their take on the Langewiesche magic…

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From the tip box: Belle Elving, home editor of the Washington Post, will take a buyout. In an email to FishbowlNY, she writes, “Nothing surprising. Just that the timing is right for me.”

Our brother blog, FishbowlDC, is straight up killing it covering the story, so head there for more details.

If you’ve trundled over to Ellie-nominated Slate recently, you’ve noticed they launched a “Hillary Deathwatch” widget that lets readers watch Clinton hang on as her ship slowly sinks. Numbers track the percentage chance Slate thinks she has of snagging the nomination (12 percent at inception, up to 12.9 percent after yesterday’s Rev. Wright news). For extra fun, readers can embed the widget in their own Facebook page or blog.

“Hillary Clinton is as good as dead,” Slate announced when they kicked the thing off at the end of March. “The question now is not just “How dead is she?” but “When will she realize it?”"

We asked Slate’s Jacob Weisberg whether he should be toying with the presidential primary this way. Weisberg answered that the widget is just Slate‘s way of questioning the collective wisdom that says Hillary still has a really good chance of winning.

“This is not a point of view about who we want to win,” he said. “This is a point of view about how we analyze the horserace. Whatever authority says this campaign is still a horse race is actually wrong. So we’re trying to give a graphic dimension to that point of view.”

The widget, Weisberg said, simply uses the capabilities of the Web to “combine the serious point that we collectively think the Democratic primary is more over than people are acknowledging, with something that’s cheeky and makes a game out of it.”

— E.B. Boyd