A shake-up is about to hit critically acclaimed Real Simple that will boot the top editor, Managing Editor Carrie Tuhy, upstairs into a still-be-worked out magazine development job.
A new editor from outside the company is going to take over day-to-day running of the magazine. A search for the right candidate has quietly been under way for at least the last month.
Sources say Glamour Executive Editor Kristin van Ogtrop has been offered the job.
Van Ogtrop did not return calls over the past two days to her office or to her home.
Tuhy is said to be reluctantly going along with the move, which was hatched by her boss, Time Inc. Corporate Editor Isolde Motley, who ranks just behind Editor-in-Chief Norman Pearlstine and Editorial Director John Huey in the corporate line-up.
The clashes between Motley and Tuhy have been a source of constant gossip by Time Inc.-ers. “For some reason, Isolde doesn’t like Tuhy,” said one insider. Motley has been given the nickname “Isolde bin Laden” by some insiders.
Said Tuhy of her relationship with Motley, “We’re two very different people, but it was a good collaboration. I think the record speaks for itself.”
“It would have been nicer to stay on,” Tuhy added, “but doing two jobs was wearing me out.”
Over the past year, she said, she has been working on a book series, TV projects and special-issue ideas for Real Simple. She took over the magazine three years ago, after its disastrous start under launch Editor Susan Wyland, who had conceived the idea but whose incarnation was deemed too austere. Advertisers were turning up their noses.
But under Tuhy’s guidance, the magazine seems to have prospered. It was tapped as the Magazine of the Year by Advertising Age in October, and more recently, Real Simple snagged a coveted National Magazine Award nomination for general excellence in its category.
It also snagged the No. 3 position on Adweek’s Hot List two weeks ago, when its top team was named “Executive Team of the Year.”
Ad pages were up 68 percent last year, and circulation was up 32 percent in the second half of 2002, including a newsstand jump of 20.3 percent, while subscriptions soared 37.4 percent. Its rate base has zoomed from 400,000 at launch in April 2000 to 1.2 million today.
Some insiders insist that Tuhy is being moved upstairs because she has shown skill at creating and perfecting new magazines. But the move will be closely watched, because other well-regarded editors who have gone that route in the past – including Frank Lally from Money, Jim Gaines from Time, Lanny Jones from People and Jim Seymore from Entertainment Weekly – have all exited the company shortly after going to the executive suite for similar development jobs.
“There is pretty much nothing that the 34th floor can’t screw up,” said one source, who sounded shocked and angered by the move to push Tuhy upstairs.
Throughout Real Simple’s turnaround, it has always been described as a “collaborative effort” between Motley and Tuhy, with Motley getting final sign-off decisions before going to press.
And at the start of her run, Tuhy seemed to be burning through staff. “She can’t manage people,” said one ex-staffer.
Tuhy always claimed that the magazine was growing so fast that it created an undue burden on the small staff.
Still, the single mother of two teenage girls seemed to bring a real human touch to its pages, and the staff in recent time seems to have been stable and loyal.
Van Ogtrop is described by one Conde Nast insider as “blonde, classy and corporate.”
“Her office is always immaculate and she always has the perfect tchotchke on her desk,” the insider said. “She’s nicely packaged.”
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Hugh Hefner is not sending his Playboy magazine en masse to the Middle East – out of fear of offending local sensibilities – but he is going to re-institute “Operation Playmate.”
Under the plan, a stable of 70 present and former playmates will send personalized pictures and greetings via e-mail to individual troops in the Middle East who request the contact.
Executive editor Bill Farley, reached at the Playboy Mansion, said that the only provision is that the e-mail request must have the troop’s APO address as part of the e-mail address.
During the first Persian Gulf War, he noted, Playboy did the same thing via snail mail, and the response “was overwhelming. They displayed the photos on their walls, on their tents and on their jeeps.”
In many ways, it revives the old World War II tradition, in which soldiers posted Betty Grable pinups on their footlockers.
After 9/11, Farley said, the company switched from mail to e-mail, in part because of the anthrax fears. He said GIs will receive “non-nude photos. A lot of the Playmates are wearing military uniforms or patriotic shirts and saluting.”
