You Can’t Keep a Determined Newspaper Man Down

In the long and colorful history of the New York Post, the photo will never be forgotten: Pete Hamill, then the editor in chief, grimacing in 1993 as he is forcibly smooched by the paper’s embattled buyer, Abe Hirschfeld.

The real estate agent and civic gadfly was trying to surmount a newsroom mutiny led by Hamill. But after two tumultuous weeks in charge, Hirschfeld was gone, and Rupert Murdoch later reacquired the tabloid.

Now, Hirschfeld is back in the news business. April 9 is the target launch date for Open Air P.M., an afternoon daily in Manhattan that he is bankrolling and operating out of offices in the Pennsylvania Hotel.

Richard Gooding, a longtime Post staffer who later became metropolitan editor of the Daily News, started this week as editor in chief.

“It’ll be a beautiful, eye-catching product that won’t resemble in any way the city’s morning papers,” Gooding says. The color product will fold a tabloid magazine inside a broad sheet that will run at least 12 pages.

Asked about Hirschfeld’s role, Gooding says Hirschfeld would not edit stories: “Abe is a builder . . . he brings in people who can do their jobs.” Plans call for a business and news staff totaling about 90 people.

Healthy Circulation: The health field in magazines is healthy, according to new figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulation. Men’s Health, which reported a circulation of 1.3 million during the second half of 1995, surpassed its guarantee to advertisers by 100,000 copies. To cite another striking example, Men’s Fitness, at nearly 296,000, increased its circulation by 19.4% over the same period in 1994.

The woman’s magazine Fitness, which went from bimonthly to 10 issues last year, also gained in total circulation, rising 8.8%, to 545,000. But Fitness committed a cardinal infraction in the publishing game when the mag missed its guarantee, or rate base, of 600,000 copies, which Gruner + Jahr USA Publishing had set so optimistically in January 1995.

Missing the rate base surely was part of the reason for last week’s departure of Editor in Chief Rona Cherry and the arrival of former YM Editor in Chief Sally Lee as her replacement. At the teen magazine YM, Lee watched circulation rise 12%, to 2.1 million, in the second half of last year.

The British-born Lee, 34, says she plans to make Fitness “a little younger and fresher. I want to make it a fitness authority and also a lot of fun--not so earnest in its approach.”

Power House: Phyllis E. Grann ranks as the most powerful woman in book publishing, and the performance of her company adds weight to the claim. The Putnam Berkley Group, which Grann heads as chairwoman and chief executive officer, has seven books on the New York Times’ national bestseller list--a logjam of success unseen in the business for a while.

Putnam’s magnificent seven include Robin Cook’s “Contagion,” which has 315,000 copies in print. W.E.B. Griffin’s “Behind the Lines” has an in-print total of 220,000 copies. Ditto the latest romance from LaVyrle Spencer, “That Camden Summer,” which has rolled out more than 300,000 copies.

“Some of it’s luck and some of it’s timing,” Grann says. Some of it may be packaging, too.

“That Camden Summer,” sans the ornately lettered design of earlier Spencer novels, features a cover illustration by Wendell Minor of a sunny seaside that seems the perfect antidote to the bitter cold that struck much of the country this winter.

Putnam’s other hits are Lillian Jackson Braun’s “The Cat Who Said Cheese” and “The Judge,” the fifth legal caper by Steve Martini.

On the nonfiction list are George Burns’ “100 Years, 100 Stories” and “Charles Kuralt’s America,” a travel chronicle by the former CBS newsman that has been rooted on the bestseller list for more than four months.

No Putnam author is more familiar than Tom Clancy, whose techno-thrillers probably sell enough copies to affect the gross national product. The good news for Clancy’s fans--and Putnam--is that, after an absence last year, he is expected back between hardcovers in mid-August. According to Grann, Putnam plans to publish Clancy’s “Executive Orders,” which picks up where his “Debt of Honor” ended.