Editor of N.Y. Post Reported Out; Cuts Cited

Jane Amsterdam, editor of the New York Post for 11 months, has quit her $200,000-a-year job after cutbacks in the floundering Sunday section, two of the newspaper’s competitors reported today.

A spokesman for the Post, Howard Rubenstein, would neither confirm nor deny the reports and he said Post owner Peter S. Kalikow would have no comment.

Amsterdam’s secretary at the Post said Amsterdam was not in the office today and was not expected. The secretary said all calls on the subject were being forwarded to Rubenstein.

Amsterdam, 37, became one of six women editing a U.S. newspaper with a circulation larger than 100,000 on June 13. She had a three-year contract.

She previously was editor of Manhattan,inc. magazine and worked for The Washington Post.

“There is a parting of the ways, but Jane has not been fired,” a source closely connected with the Post told New York Newsday. The Daily News also quoted a source as saying, “There was a mutual parting of the ways.”

Both reports said Amsterdam’s resignation may have resulted over the decision to scale back the newspaper’s 11-week-old Sunday edition.

The Post announced it was reducing the paper to a single section and cutting the price from $1 to 40 cents due to a lack of advertising in the Sunday section.

Amsterdam was heavily involved in creating the Sunday edition.

She would be the second top news executive to leave the Post recently. Publisher Peter Price, 48, left the newspaper last month to begin a national sports newspaper.