Hearst Mover and Shaker Is Now Just Moving
It was one of those seismic announcements in the publishing industry that fuels conversation for weeks. After 5 1/2 years as president of the Hearst Corp.’s huge magazines division, D. Claeys Bahrenburg was out, replaced by Cathleen P. Black, who most recently has been president of the Newspaper Assn. of America.
The announcement last week stunned most of those who had watched the patrician Bahrenburg when he was the one doing the replacing. He changed more than a dozen editors and publishers in Hearst’s roster of monthlies, which includes such brand names as Good Housekeeping, Harper’s Bazaar, Country Living, Cosmopolitan, Redbook and Esquire.
He also cut so-called “marginal” circulation at Hearst’s 13 wholly owned magazines and raised ad rates--a controversial plan he tried to sell to Madison Avenue through a series of print ads that seem more obtuse than Burger King’s old campaign featuring that guy named Herb.
Some advertisers weren’t buying. According to Advertising Age, Kraft Foods yanked nearly all its advertising, worth about $30 million, and a big piece of its tobacco ads, which total another $20 million.
Black is on record as supporting unequivocally Hearst’s new circulation and advertising policies. This has prompted speculation in publishing circles that it was Bahrenburg’s clumsy handling of the new strategy, or perhaps a rupture in his relationship with the Hearst family, that led to his ouster. Last week’s announcement said only that he had resigned “to pursue other interests” (a familiar phrase in these situations) and would have “a consultative relationship with Hearst going forward.”
In hiring the 51-year-old Black, who starts next month, Hearst Corp. President Frank A. Bennack Jr., 62, may have a more likely successor than Bahrenburg to the publishing and broadcasting company’s No. 2 executive, Gilbert C. Maurer, now 67, who is executive vice president and CEO. Introducing Black two years ago at a convention of the Newspaper Assn. of America, Bennack, who was then the chairman of the trade group, praised her “outstanding professional leadership at a time of great turbulence and anxiety” in the economy and the newspaper industry.
In last week’s announcement, Bennack said that Black “understands strategy, the value of franchises, the fight for dollars in a competitive marketplace and she has a proven track record for launching new products.”
Black is crashing what some in the industry consider an old boys club at the higher echelons of Hearst, where she will be the first woman to lead one of the corporation’s operating groups.
She is no stranger to precedent. Cathleen Prunty Black, a native of Chicago and a graduate of Trinity College in Washington, in 1979 became the first woman publisher of a weekly consumer magazine, New York. Hired away by Gannett Co. in 1983, she first was president of its newly launched USA Today and the following year began a seven-year stint as publisher, helping to give the ambitious newspaper greater credibility on Wall Street and on Madison Avenue.
In 1991, when Bennack served on a search committee at what was then the American Newspaper Publishers Assn., Black was named president of the group at a cost of around $1 million for the first year of her three-year contract--a sum that prompted several papers to quit the organization in anger.
Compared to Bahrenburg’s aloof manner, Black’s style is to stay in close touch, especially when it comes to marketing. A 1985 profile in Adweek magazine, which named her Woman of the Year, described her practice of squeezing up to six sales calls as well as a business-related breakfast, lunch and dinner into each day’s schedule.
Out of the Gates: It may be the quote of the year. Tina Brown, editor-in-chief of the New Yorker, said at last month’s American Magazine Conference: “If print is dead, why is Bill Gates writing a book?”
Gates, the Microsoft Corp. chairman and author of the newly published “The Road Ahead” (Viking), explained on Monday: “I love to read books.”
Gates spoke at a Rainbow Room luncheon given by Working Woman magazine, which kicks off its 20th anniversary in 1996 by featuring an excerpt from “The Road Ahead” in the January issue. Clearly it was Gates, not the sunny view from 65 floors above Manhattan, that packed the room with publishing and advertising people, including feminist icon Gloria Steinem and homemaking guru Martha Stewart, seated at neighboring tables.
With an occasional glance at his notes, contained on a PC in front of him, the computer guru said he believed that it would be many years before newspapers become outdated by new technology because their size and portability remain in their favor.
Another good quote regarding Gates appears in the Dec. 11 issue of the New Yorker. On reading “The Road Ahead,” John Seabrook writes, “One is dimly aware that Gates’ vision is not neutral--as a technologist, he is in the business of inventing the future and then charging money for it.”
Rabin Books Planned: Family memories of slain Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin will echo in books being planned by his widow and granddaughter.
“In the Name of Sorrow and Hope” is the working title of the book being written by 18-year-old Noa Ben-Artzi Philosof, whose short eulogy at her grandfather’s burial captivated a worldwide audience. “Grandfather, you were the pillar of fire in front of the camp and now we are just a camp left alone in the dark and we are so cold and sad,” she said.
Her book will be published in April by Alfred A. Knopf Inc., which acquired the North American rights for an undisclosed sum from Editions Robert Laffont-Fixot, the French house that signed the young woman.
“She’s got it--and it’s pure,” said Jonathan Segal, a Knopf senior editor who is handling the book. “It will be three things: a young Israeli woman saying what she feels about this generation of Israelis and the pressure on them, a longer account of her mourning for her grandfather and an argument for peace.”
Leah Rabin, who was married to the Israeli leader for 47 years, is being represented to publishing houses by literary agent Marvin Josephson, a distinguished figure in the book business who counts retired generals Colin Powell and Norman Schwarzkopf among his clients. “We’re still sorting things out,” Josephson said. “I was friendly with Mrs. Rabin’s husband and had talked with him about doing a book in the future.”
* Paul D. Colford is a columnist for Newsday. His column is published Fridays.
