It’s a tumultuous day in the media world. Page Six Magazine is going quarterly, changes are under way at Women’s Health, editors are out at OK!, staffers are being cut from ABC News, and everyone is still mourning Domino. Though, as always, there’s no shortage of interesting debates on new directions for the industry. After the jump, your sad — but free! — media news.
• “Chaos” has taken hold at Women’s Health! According to tipsters, the magazine’s new editor, Michele Promaulayko, formerly of Cosmopolitan, hasn’t jived with the full staff, and this is maybe because she knows she won’t be seeing some of them soon and plans to replace them with former Hearst staffers. The upcoming April issue marks Promaulayko’s editorial debut, and insiders are expecting it to look markedly different from past issues. [FishbowlNY/Mediabistro]
• Over at the Financial Times, most online content is currently for-pay, but the plan is being debated (over at Portfolio, Jeff Bercovici has a, er, colorful alternative that involves “collecting floating gold coins or mushrooms”). And a Mediabistro poll, at the last time we checked, finds that a majority of people (who read Mediabistro) would be willing to pay subscription fees for online versions of folded magazines. Would you?
[FishbowlNY/Mediabistro]
• Reader’s Digest is indeed cutting 8 percent of its staff. [FishbowlNY/Mediabistro]
• Wild speculation time: Could Condé Nast be forced to shutter The New Yorker? Blasphemy! [FishbowlNY/Mediabistro]
• OK! magazine’s editor-in-chief, Susan Toepfer, who arrived at the magazine just three months ago, has been fired. Sara Ivens left the magazine to get married and live in Kentucky, as the Post reports, but is now coming back on as editor-in-chief, apparently unable to catch a break. Toepfer’s (former) co-worker, general manager Kent Brownridge, once Jann Wenner’s wingman at Rolling Stone, is out as well. [NYP, Mixed Media/Portfolio]
• ABC News is laying off 40 staffers, and leaving 60 open positions unfilled. [Gawker]
•400 staffers at Disney-ABC are being laid off. [HR]
• Even college newspapers are feeling the print pinch [PBS]
• Capitol Hill chronicler the Congressional Quarterly is for sale, so that its backers can keep the St. Petersburg Times afloat. [WSJ]
• At least five web-only newspapers are taking the Pulitzer board up on that offer to award online newsrooms. [Editor & Publisher]
• And not to scare the Congressional Quarterly, but the Baltimore Examiner, a free newspaper, has failed to find a buyer, and folded. [Baltimore Sun]
