Following WWD's speculative article about the state of her contract (up at the end of the month), rumors festered yesterday evening that AMI editorial director Bonnie Fuller had left the company. AMI CEO David Pecker had called a smoke-filled meeting with the company's brassiest balls, fueling the chatter that the…
WWD reports today that AMI editorial director Bonnie Fuller's juicy contract expires at the end of the month and has not yet been renewed. With AMI pinching pennies to the tune of sacking 5 Star staffers last week, some believe that there's no way in hell AMI chairman David Pecker will renew Fuller's contract for the…
• Charlie Rose — with a new pig-heart valve — returns to TV Monday. [NYDN]
• Congress boosts TV indecency fines, ensuring the Parents Television Council can continue its reign of puritanical terror over the nation's broadcasters. [WSJ]
• CBS's Kim Dozier returns to United States, still in critical condition but "in…
This just in from American Media's spokespeople: Star magazine, Bonnie's little tab-turned-glossy that could, is doing a "minor restructuring" of its operations to devote more resources to its L.A. office. Which means fewer resources for the New York office. Which means five staffers — a reporter, a designer, and a…
• Philly guys officially snag KR's Philly papers from McClatchy. [NYT]
• Al Siegel has left the Times Building. [NYO]
• Despite AMI noncompete, Star vet Mark Coleman to become deputy editor at Bauer's Life & Style, setting off various other staff moves too mundane for you to care much about. [NYP]
• Magazines want…
Freelance photojournalist Greg Mathieson has filed suit against American Media Inc., home of Bonnie Fuller and her rag collection, for stealing his photo archive of some 1,400 photos. The archive was contaminated with anthrax through a letter sent to the company's Boca Raton offices in 2001; AMI then filed an…
• Jacob Bernstein reports that ineffectual Times public editor Barney Calame is considered either: "[L]ike Kenneth Starr," unable "to step back and ask what any of it means"; unable to see the forest for the trees; like a "mosquito," always biting but never wounding; an "umpire," merely calling balls and strikes; or…
• Bonnie's rich AMI contract is up at the end of June, and — as one of her mags gets shut down and another's redesign is more or less undone — negotiations are underway. Great timing, eh? [NYP (second item)]
• Newspapers execs met in Chicago, surrounded by dinosaur skeletons. Sexy Jon Fine enjoys that metaphor, as he…
• Yesterday's American Media bloodletting will cut the mag publisher's workforce by 9 percent. [WWD]
• And will save the company about $10 million. [NYP]
• With Katie Couric heading to CBS, NBC is days away from a deal to bring Meredith Vieira to fill her clickety stiletto heels. [NYT]
• Gabe Sherman agrees: Times…
And the next AMI shoe to drop: The National Enquirer is headed back to its old stomping grounds in Florida. Along with the move, it gets a new editor-in-chief as David Perel replaces Paul Field, who was imported from London a year ago. So much, it seems, for CEO David Pecker's year-old plan to consolidate all his…
The board of directors of American Media — the publishing company that brings you such joys at National Enquirer, Star, Bonnie Fuller, and a CEO named David Pecker — is meeting in New York today, and apparently there's all sorts of financial tension going on: New board members, problems with bondholders, even …
Damn Bonnie Fuller for writing that massively titled book of hers — over ten years since her initial rise to legendary monsterhood, the release of The Joys of Much Too Much : Go for the Big Life—The Great Career, The Perfect Guy, and Everything Else You've Ever Wanted is the only justifiable reason that we're still…
• Times happily runs advertising section from Sudan, whose leaders — as Times columnist Nick Kristof likes to point out — are encouraging genocide. [NYDN]
• Lewis Lapham, as he steps down from Harper's editorship, will keep working. And keep smoking. [WP]
• One Park, a reality show about life at AMI, moves closer to…
You might recall that Ad Age's Media Guy, Simon Dumenco, had his Calvin Kleins in a twist Monday about a speech — or, as he'd probably prefer, an abomination of a speech — Bonnie Fuller recently delivered to Columbia Journalism School students last month. Fretted Simon, with his own extensive capitalization:
• Things we never thought we'd say: Iranians have a delightfully level-headed reaction to the Mohammed-cartoons brouhaha; the country's biggest paper will run a contest for best Holocaust cartoon, which is an entirely reasonable response. [Reuters via WP]
• We're not quite sure how we forget this yesterday, but sullen…
We confess we were a bit taken aback by James Brady's fawning Forbes column on Bonnie Fuller today, "Queen of the Tabloids." He goes on and on about what wonderful things Bon-Bon has been doing with Star, and we were pretty sure the CW was that the Star makeover hasn't been a huge success, that Bonnie wasn't making…
Inspired by Us Weekly's entertainingly cruel "Who's Older" game (which may have originated at Amy's Robot), Media Orchard turns the tables:
It's not the best of weeks for American Media Inc., the publisher of all your favorite supermarket tabloids and a whole bunch of fitness books you never look at. Head honcho David Pecker told Mediaweek yesterday that the company will reclassify some of its circulation in anticipation of new audit rules, and that…
