Last updated: 1:04 pm
October 3, 2008
Posted: 4:40 am
October 3, 2008
THE search for a new editor-in- chief of Life & Style is over.
Insiders say that Bauer Publications is expected to announce, possibly as early as today, that Dan Wakeford will assume the editor-in-chief role.
He is currently an editor at Life & Style's larger sister title In Touch, and will be the magazine's sixth editor-in-chief in its short, three-year history.
As reported by Media Ink, Life & Style's current editor-in-chief, Donna Armstrong, who arrived only in June, is expecting a child and insiders said she wants to return to her native Australia to have the baby.
Wakeford is a veteran of London's Fleet Street who worked as a news editor at the Sun, a London daily, before landing at In Touch.
"If anyone can turn it around, he can," said one insider.
Earlier, Wakeford worked on Life & Style when In Touch Editor-in- Chief Richard Spencer was doing double duty supervising both magazines.
Bauer officials could not be reached for comment at presstime.
The magazine earlier this year lowered its rate base and raised its cover price to $2.99, resulting in a decline in the number of units sold but, thanks to the price hike, an in crease in revenue.
The magazine currently prom ises advertisers it will deliver 550,000 copies a week, but in the most recent four-week period, the magazine missed its lowered rate base and sold fewer than 400,000 copies on newsstands.
Alpha bits
There was a bloodbath this week at Alpha Media, owner of Maxim and Blender magazines.
The company is expected to eliminate at least 50 to 60 people as the company relocates much of its back- office operations to the Nashville, Tenn., area by early next year.
Stunned employees at Alpha got the word Wednesday, when the company said that its central services operations, including fi nance, manufacturing and distribution, offices services and digital tech nology, were mak ing the move south to the town of Franklin, Tenn.
The editorial and publishing jobs are not moving.
Alpha was taken over by Quadrangle, the buyout firm run by Steve Rattner and Peter Ezersky, just over a year ago.
In August, Alpha's recently named CEO Kent Brownridge stepped down suddenly and was replaced by two new co-CEOs, Glenn Rosenbloom and Stephen Duggan.
Within weeks, Brownridge was in action as the new general manager of the US version of OK! magazine, charged with trying to stop the weekly magazine's cash burn.
Very few of the current staff at Alpha will be relocated, as the company is betting most New York- based workers will remain here and the company can cut costs by hiring cheaper labor in Tennessee.
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