GYPSY ROSE, LEFT
THE man known only as “Gypsy” at the Daily News has hit the road – part of the latest round of six buyouts at Mort Zuckerman‘s embattled daily.
Insiders said they were given a year’s pay as part of their exit package.
Eugene “Gypsy” Impallamini, known around the office as “Gypsy Impalla,” was the office manager who had started as a proof boy in the composing room at the old Daily News Building and then moved to the far West Side when Zuckerman abandoned Midtown.
“How are you ever going to replace Gypsy? Not only was he really colorful and unique but he was an amazingly hard worker,” said one insider. “You’d ask him for something and bingo – it was done.”
Added another, “He could get anything done from fixing a copying machine to conducting tours for school kids.”
Most importantly, he was also known as the man who bestowed a thousand good-natured nicknames.
Nobody seemed to know that Gypsy’s real first name was Eugene, and most people we spoke with didn’t even know his last name.
One source said that Gypsy was in fact his real first name, named by a father who was jazz musician.
Not surprisingly, Gypsy left a memorable farewell voicemail on his phone before he checked out Friday.
It opens with a Frank Sinatra song crooning the classic line, “And now, the end is near,” followed by Gypsy himself chiming in as the song plays on in the background.
“Hey, what a way to go, eh? It’s Gypsy! As most of you know, I split from the News, so this will be my last voicemail. Man, I had a ball. I miss all my friends – old and new – all the dudes, and especially the chicks. You know who you are. But I’m sure we’ll hook up again. Until then, keep smiling. Everyone take care. Be Cool.”
Then, as Gypsy fades off, Sinatra sings, “And more much more than this, I did it my way.”
Gypsy, who will have a sendoff tomorrow at Hogs & Heifers, is not alone in bidding farewell to the Daily Snooze. Lenore Schlossberg, secretary for Ed Fay, vice president of editorial administration, also took the buyout. So did Carolyn Lee, a photo editor, and award-winning photographer John Naso.
Veteran News Editor Sam Papa and illustrator Marcos Oksenhendler, who also teaches at the Parsons School of Design, are also gone.
Gypsy, Papa and Oksenhendler each worked at the paper for over 40 years.
A Daily News spokeswoman did not return a call for comment by presstime.
Mixed feelings
There was joy at BusinessWeek last week when Paul Barrett, an assistant managing editor who had quit three months earlier to return to The Wall Street Journal, revealed that he was returning to the McGraw-Hill flagship.
It came just as a piece edited by Barrett was nominated as a finalist in the public service category for a National Magazine Award, the magazine’s fourth nomination in two years.
The joy was short-lived, however.
Earlier this week, Michael France, a senior editor who covered corporations, announced he was leaving to join the high-powered Brunswick Group as a partner.
His last day will be April 18.
“There’s a lot of unrest inside,” said a source close to the situation.
France had intended to leave a few days earlier, but didn’t want to interfere with the farewells for Assistant Managing Editors Frank Comes and Mary Kuntz, who both served their last days at BW on March 28.
The duo will become senior editors at McKinsey Publications, a nascent publishing arm being started by the McKinsey consulting firm.
Editor-in-Chief Steve Adler, who succeeded Steve Shepard three years ago this week, has been weathering a barrage of criticism, especially after a year-end axing that sent seven editors out the door.
During his three years at the helm, Adler let go 25 editorial people in 2005, 18 in 2006 and seven last year.
The Washington, DC, bureau, which once had a dozen staffers, has endured a lot of the cuts. It is now down to five people, although Alder noted that he has two open positions that he plans to fill and that he recently added the Oil & Glory blogger Steve LeVine to the staff.
“The bureau was too big, in my opinion, and covering raw politics, in my opinion, is not in our best interest,” Adler said.
Sources say none of the cutbacks has been enough to stem the tide of red ink.
Last year, the magazine was said to have lost over $20 million. This year, with ad pages down in the first quarter, it is on target to lose more than $20 million yet again, according to several sources. One source claimed the losses could reach $40 million.
Adler declined to discuss the magazine’s finances, but insisted that the impact of the job cuts has been minimal.
Staffers seem divided on the merits of the recent redesign that was engineered by Adler and first appeared in October.
One source said that over 1,000 angry letters and e-mails have piled into the BW offices and that Adler is trying to keep them from the staff.
Adler acknowledge that he has gotten strongly worded feedback, but said the design has continued to evolve.
For instance, he increased the size of the typeface, changed the Opinions section in the back and decreased the number of pages that run the BusinessWeek summary. All were a response to complaints voiced by readers.
He said newsstand sales covering the period of the change were up 9 percent to 37,397 in the second half of 2007, and that syndicated research from MRI shows that overall readership is up 3 percent to 4.9 million – the highest number of readers since 1998.
Overall circulation was up only 1.3 percent to 933,566, and some insiders think the number is dropping as core subscribers rebel against the new look and direction.
Ten years ago, BusinessWeek was racking up more than 6,000 ad pages and in 1999 posted a profit of $100 million.
Still, as one critic pointed out, The Economist managed to soar to the No. 1 spot atop the Adweek Hot List released Monday, with a 500-page jump in ad pages. BusinessWeek in the same period was losing nearly 500 pages.
To be fair, ad page tallies are not usually directly tied to an editor’s performance.
The publisher’s job was open for six months as the magazine searched for a replacement for Geoff Dodge, who left in the last quarter of 2007 for a dot-com gig. The Journal’s Jessica Shipley recently moved into the job, reporting to BusinessWeek’s new president Keith Fox.
But as one advertising source jibbed, “Whose fault is it that they didn’t have a publisher?”
Light’s out
Forbes is also continuing to lose staffers.
Senior Editor Larry Light, an eight-year veteran who oversees the money and investing section of the magazine, said he was quitting to move to The Wall Street Journal.
He edits the “Makers & Breakers” column, but more importantly, he edits the yearend Investment Guide, which is the magazine’s top newsstand seller of the year – even outpacing the advertising heavy Forbes 400 list of richest Americans.
“My last day here is Friday,” said Light. “I start at The Wall Street Journal Monday. I’m really jazzed about it. I always wanted to work there.”
He said he doesn’t have a title, but will be working in the Money & Investing section of the paper.
