These have been nervous weeks for John Byrne, editor of Fast Company, the long-ailing Gruner +Jahr title that's been dismissed as a sure goner with the recent sale of the four G+J family titles to Meredith.
   The word: Inc. would live but Fast Company would die at the hands of whichever bidder acquired them at auction.
   Now Fast Company will live after all.
   Perhaps as early as today, Chicago businessman Joseph Mansueto will be announced as the new owner of Fast Company and Inc., having won out over a number of magazine companies in an auction last week.
   Mansueto was recruited by Byrne to join the bidding, with the intent of finding a buyer committed to both magazines. The sense was that all the other bidders would have invested in Inc. but folded Fast Company, the weaker of the two titles.
   While there's no official word, Mansueto, founder of Morningstar, the investment research company, is the presumed winner, his bid having withstood a last-minute challenge from the Economist Group, one of a handful of major media companies that entered the bidding. Other bidders included Time Inc., American City Business Journals, and venture capital firms Alta Communications and Abry Partners.
   Mansueto is the chairman and CEO of Morningstar, based in Chicago, but the investment in the two business titles is a personal one. He is also an investor in Time Out Chicago. 
   A spokesman for Gruner + Jahr said this morning the company had no comment on the auction turnout but said that an announcement from the company's headquarters in Germany is expected. Calls seeking comment this morning from Mansueto and Ad Media Partners, which conducted the auction, were not returned. A spokesperson for the Economist Group declined comment on its last-minute bidding maneuver.
   Mansueto gets both titles on the cheap, paying as little as $35 million, according to a story in today's New York Times. That's a fraction of the $550 million G+J paid for the two magazines at the height of the ad economy five years ago.
   But Mansueto will have to invest substantially in both Inc,. and Fast Company, following years of starvation management under G+J.
   Byrne told Media Life earlier this month that the years under G+ J had severely weakened the titles. He had little hope for his magazine's recovery under G+J.
   "You can't engineer a turnaround under a company that simply cuts costs, reduces your newsstand copies, gives up on newsstand promotion and marketing, doesn't actively solicit new subscribers, and collapses your sales force to merge it with another magazine," he said.
   Magazine consultant Martin Walker, the chairman of Walker Communications, says Fast Company is damaged but salvageable with the sort of vision it had prior to Gruner & Jahr's stewardship.
   "It needs a very special editor who has a real vision," he said. "If someone could resurrect it, it's the kind of thing you want to read as opposed to skim."
   Walker is referring the the magazine's peak years under the ownership of Mort Zuckerman, owner of U.S. News & World Report and The New York Daily News. "It wasn't so much a techie magazine as it was a management and business magazine that talked about what technology was going to do for business."
   While both Inc. and Fast Company suffered under G+J, Fast Company suffered additionally from the collapse of the so-called New Economy titles, which went south with the dot.com bust of four years ago. 
   In his recent interview, Byrne told Media Life that Fast Company was primed for a turnaround under the right owner.
   "Our newsstand was up until G+J cut our draw," he said. "Our renewal rates are up. Our engagement with the reader is at or near all-time highs. Our core readers love us and put our brand up there, in terms of their emotional connection with the magazine, with the New Yorker, National Geographic and Vanity Fair."
   Byrne said the editorial content at Fast Company is solid, but the company needs an owner who will provide it resources to survive.
   "I've had four publishers and three bosses in 22 months. Truth is, a new owner with a much lower basis price can more clearly see a path toward success. After having spent $350 million for Fast Company, G+J couldn't ever really recoup the investment or feel very good about it."