Friday

Rosie: We wuz
robbed by G+J

Says books were cooked to tie her to magazine

  Rosie was one of those wacky but very smart magazines ideas that died because the principals, Rosie O'Donnell and Dan Brewster, just couldn't get along.
   They still can't get along, and at this pace, with the charges and counter-charges, the two will be in court for many years.
   The latest charge, coming from the Rosie bunker: Gruner + Jahr cooked the books to inflate the actual earnings for Rosie, and the purpose was to keep her from leaving the magazine. A clause in her contract said she could walk away from the title only if earnings fell below a set point. Above that, her leaving would be a breach of contract and make her liable for damages.
   May Jo White, O'Donnell's attorney, claims to have uncovered an email from G+J New York to executives in Germany seeking permission to mislead O'Donnell on the magazine's true revenues.
   The charges were contained in court papers filed yesterday in O'Donnell's countersuit against G+J. Both sides are asking in the range of $100 million in the wake of the collapse of Rosie, which O'Donnell quit in a huff last September when her demands for full editorial control were rebuffed by Brewster.
   Rosie, though widely expected to be a disaster, did well initially as the relaunch of the long-in-the-tooth McCall's, holding decent circulation levels. But Brewster became alarmed when newsstand sales began to slip, and at that point stepped in to move the magazine away from the quirky concept O'Donnell was pursuing and back toward the celebrity title he had originally envisioned. Brewster's initial idea was a title to compete with People.
   That led to months of nasty squabbling, much of it aired as unwanted public laundry in the media press, with G+J portraying O'Donnell as slightly wacky, the former queen of nice apparently having gotten in touch with her inner bitch.
   O'Donnell threw many fits and used words not printed in family newspapers as she persisted in demanding editorial control.
   Attorney White claims in her filing that G+J's book-cooking began in May 2002 and was done with the full support of G+J’s German high command.
   This is the second time that G+J has been accused of cooking its books.
   Advertising Age and Women’s Wear Daily reported that the company puffed YM’s circulation numbers by 200,000 during its second-half 2001 audit.
   YM’s publisher has admitted to the charges, but the company denies the allegations in the case of Rosie.
   G+J USA said Thursday that it stood by its figures, and in fact estimates that newsstand sales for the six months prior to June 30 actually bettered the threshold by about $500,000.
   They said that subsequent adjustments for newsstand sales levels resulted in a difference of just $10,000.
   O’Donnell’s other contentions of G+J’s “poor business decisions” include creating a bad newsstand distribution plan, putting circulation rate bases too high and putting subscription prices too low initially.
   She left the publication in September, and it folded soon after.

Printer-Friendly Version | Send to a Friend
Cover Page | Contact Us