By Rebecca Finkel

       Self magazine has a new editor-in-chief. Cynthia Leive, deputy editor of Glamour, will assume the post on Aug. 2, replacing Rochelle Udell, who is leaving to pursue other interests, according to Conde Nast executives.
    Leive has worked at Glamour for more than a decade. She was hired as an editorial assistant in 1988 and was promoted to senior writer three years later. She was named deputy editor last summer. Leive produced Glamour's annual Women of the Year special issue. Before Glamour she worked at The Paris Review and The Saturday Review.
      Udell has not said what she intends to do when she leaves Self but the New York Post reports that she is in talks with Hearst magazines president Cathleen Black and Oprah Winfrey about taking a top position with the new title that is set to launch next spring aimed at viewers of Winfrey’s talk show. Udell did not return phone calls seeking comment.
     Leive takes over Self at a critical time. Ad pages have dropped 18.9 percent from January to June, to 539 pages, and ad revenue are down 16.4 percent year to date. Single-copy newsstand sales dropped 8.8 percent in 1998.
    Some attribute the magazine’s declining sales to a verticalization of the health and beauty categories, which they say has made the magazine increasingly vulnerable to niche publications.
    "Self became a horizontal magazine with a lot of vertical competitors," Martin Walker of Walker Communications told Media Life in an interview several weeks ago. "The Self of today is too general to compete with the niche publications and yet too specialized to go against the more general-interest women’s magazines. That leaves it floating in a vacuum with no real identity readers and advertisers can attach to."
    But media buyers interviewed by Media Life say the magazine is experiencing a temporary slump but remains well-positioned in its category. Neil Ascher, group media director at DMB&B, said, "Self has managed to keep up with the wants and demands of active women, given all the changes in the category in the past few years." Ascher considers the magazine a must buy for advertisers targeting health-conscious women. Anita Peterson, director of the Optimum magazine group at DDB Needham Worldwide, told Media Life, "Women turn to Self because they have a healthy mindset and a healthy lifestyle."
    Self is second to Allure in reaching women ages 18-49 and second to Elle in reaching educated women. Shape still leads the fitness category with a circulation of 1.3 million.

-Rebecca Finkel is a staff writer for Media Life.