Holiday Gloom at Primedia

At first glance, the fact that Primedia's Wednesday, Dec. 12, Town Meeting was held at the very venue that had hosted the company's holiday party the year before seemed ironic, if not completely tacky. Holiday fun definitely wasn't on the agenda this year?nor was it in the budget, according to chairman and CEO Tom Rogers, since the economy and the terrorists had stolen Christmas. He did feel, however, that an information session was in order. So 1500 members of the company's New York-based magazine staffs?from New York, Teen, Modern Bride, American Baby and Seventeen to Automobile and Surfing Girl?were summoned to the Marriott Marquis ballroom, where they were forced to learn what all members of the Primedia family do on a day-to-day operations basis, apparently in excruciating detail.

Rogers never mentioned that the reason he was still holding court in the ballroom was that he couldn't get his deposit back from the Marriott after he secured the hotel for a holiday party earlier in the year. The mostly confused editorial, artistic and production teams sat quietly in the gaily decorated ballroom, reminiscing about last year's festivities, which included a sushi bar, unlimited booze and a photo booth where imaging experts replaced the Mona Lisa's face with yours.

Attendance at the Town Meeting, unlike that holiday party, was mandatory. The event featured a keynote speech by New York publisher Alan Katz, coffee and single-serving bags of pretzels and Terra chips; there was also much cheerleading, and systematic repetition of the company's new mantra: We shall overcome.

Given the current status of publishing in general and Primedia specifically, the crowd was understandably wary. Though much of the hours-long presentation focused on how poorly all publishers are doing post-WTC, Primedia's future had in fact been the subject of much headline speculation way before Sept. 11. That?along with freezes on all salaries and hiring efforts?made the event feel, according to one New York staffer, "like a load of propaganda. We weren't doing well this or last year, either, but now, for some reason, Tom Rogers has this theory that we were booming right up until Sept. 11, at which point we, like every other operation in Manhattan, began having problems."

Overall, editors and writers seemed unimpressed. "Basically," groaned one senior editor, "the head of each division got up and gave their spiel about what they do?and very long-winded. They talked about how they closed Brill's and sold Bacon's like they were bragging. Now they have so much more income! But I don't know where that money's going. All I hear is that I can't let my interviews have coffee or dessert when I take them out to lunch anymore. It was not very uplifting."

And not very reassuring, either. According to one copy chief, "It was just deadly. The CFO got up there and started giving grim facts about the economic climate for magazines in the coming year. He had a list displayed of cost-cutting techniques that Primedia and other companies like Forbes and Hearst will be instituting, and layoffs were listed. Everyone panicked. People were walking around the office the next day trying to figure out who's going to be laid off in January."

The mood escalated from depressing to horrifying when Primedia consumer media and magazine president and CEO John Loughlin "embarrassed himself by trying to dance to Britney Spears during his teen magazine segment." New York contributors Al D'Amato and Ed Koch took turns on the podium, and Koch "rambled on about the time after his term in office ended and someone told him he was the worst mayor ever, to which he responded, 'Fuuuck you!' I still don't know what that had to do with anything."

Many staffers did not stay for the reception that followed, finding the whole exercise what one copy editor called "an infuriating waste of time. I have a weekly to put out. I need a day sucked out of my week like this?"

In October, Rogers had personally visited many of the magazines' offices, discussing budget cuts and heading meetings in which he announced that there would, of course, be no Christmas party, and that from then on there would be no free and unlimited supply of soda for the staffs.

"That's been the worst part," quipped one editorial assistant. "They got me hooked on the caffeine, and just like that they took it away."