The Free Village Voice Is One Hot Newspaper in Manhattan

The Village Voice, which now calls itself “The Newspaper That Can’t Be Bought,” is also a newspaper that can’t be found.

Since the weekly switched to free distribution in Manhattan two weeks ago--and more than doubled circulation in the borough, to 150,000--spot checks throughout Midtown have found many of the paper’s new curbside boxes empty from Day One. It makes a fellow wonder if those who used to buy the Voice on its second or third day of sale (Thursday and Friday) are now being cut off inadvertently.

Publisher David Schneiderman concedes that readers have called to complain they can’t find the Voice--because, he explained, readers are plucking all of the copies out of the boxes within hours of their being stocked early on Wednesday mornings.

“We don’t want people not to have it,” he went on, announcing Monday that the Voice will increase circulation by an additional 35,000 in Manhattan. It will do this by resupplying throughout the week certain busy bookstores and other popular outlets.

The Voice’s freebie policy follows similar moves in California by the paper’s owner, Stern Publishing Inc. The company gives away the LA Weekly and the OC Weekly, which covers Orange County.

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Author, Author: As popular as Bob Grant was on New York station WABC-AM, his publisher had comparatively modest expectations for the conservative’s first book, “Let’s Be Heard.” It received a first printing of only 30,000 copies. However, when Grant’s firing last week by the Disney-owned WABC became front-page news in four New York City papers, Pocket Books ordered an additional 20,000, while logging call after call from national broadcasts wanting to interview the suddenly red-hot author.

“We felt it would be a regional book at first, but now the interest is much more national because Grant’s firing has become a free-speech issue,” said Cindy Ratzlaff, Pocket’s associate director of publicity. Grant’s dismissal--for which no official explanation was given--followed irreverent remarks he made about Ron Brown when the commerce secretary was presumed dead in a plane crash.

Just one problem: Early this week, Grant had not yet agreed to do the interviews with what Ratzlaff called “the biggest and most prestigious shows. He’s given us reasons that we’re not allowed to talk about.”

Grant, who has worked on the New York dial since leaving Los Angeles’ KABC-AM (790) 26 years ago, has hardly been in seclusion, so his reluctance to sit for the interviews surely is causing serious frustration at Pocket Books. A call to Grant’s home was not returned.

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Outtakes From Mag Awards: Tuesday’s 30th annual presentation of the National Magazine Awards drew 1,344 people to the grand ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel--the largest gathering to date because, one industry executive suggested, the New York Observer had not broken the suspense this year by revealing the winners in advance.

Saveur, the food magazine launched less than two years ago, generated the talk of the afternoon by winning two awards (a tie with the New Yorker)--for its package on Cajun cooking and for photography. The general-excellence award won by Civilization, which also started publishing in the fall of 1994, offered further evidence that start-ups can compete with long-established publications.

The American Society of Magazine Editors, which sponsors these Oscars of the business, inaugurated a Hall of Fame Award on Tuesday. The five initial recipients were Clay Felker, founding editor of New York magazine; Osborn Elliott, editor of Newsweek from 1961 to 1976; Ruth Whitney, who has been editor in chief of Glamour for 28 years; Helen Gurley Brown, editor in chief of Cosmopolitan since 1965; and Richard B. Stolley, founding editor of People, in 1974, and its boss for eight years.

Stolley, who until recently had been executive producer of the TV entertainment magazine “Extra,” saluted the “sleep-deprived pioneers” who helped him launch what is considered the most commercially successful magazine in history and concluded: “People who need people are not the luckiest people in the world--I am.”

The first to flee the Waldorf was S.I. Newhouse Jr., the billionaire chairman of Conde Nast. When two of his magazines, Details and GQ, lost a general-excellence award to Outside (for publications with circulations of 400,000 to 1 million), he bolted to the door. None of his properties was vying for the final prize, the general excellence award for million-plus mags, won by Business Week.

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Afterwords: Add Rosie O’Donnell’s name to the growing list of comics signed to book deals. Hers is with Warner Books, which says that a “part memoir, part commentary on the issues” will be published in the fall of 1997. . . .

Oh, yes. Fresh from her consultative role on the New Yorker’s recent women’s issue, Roseanne apparently plans to write another book--this one for Doubleday’s business/management imprint, Currency. Its director, Harriet Rubin, tells Variety’s “Buzz” column that “CEOs can learn a lot from her.”