Bonnie Fuller's Boss on Whether She Was Worth It

American Media chief David Pecker spoke at a Magazine Publishers of America breakfast today. I asked the question that was on everybody's mind: Does Pecker think the $10 million or so he paid to Bonnie Fuller, who resigned as editorial director last week, was money well spent? Or could some other, cheaper editor have produced similar results -- ie. relaunching Star as a glossy without actually making it into a major newsstand success?

Okay, so it was a loaded question, but don't feel bad for Pecker: He dodged it like a pro. Read his response and see if you can detect anything resembling an answer amid all the vamping and goalpost-moving.

I don't know how many editors that I know that have been editors in chief for the last 27 years and launched and took over for Helen Gurley Brown, and you look what she's done at Marie Claire and Cosmo and Glamour and then what she did with Us Weekly. I think when Bonnie started on Us Weekly, she really was the one who put the major jolt in the celebrity journalism market and made the celebrities real and like everyone else. She did that. Bonnie gets credit for that.

I think you take away anything to do from her salary base just for what she has accomplished. And the position that I had as a publisher. Star magazine was a 60-page tabloid selling for $2.19 on roto paper, competing against In Touch, a hundred-page glossy magazine at $1.99 cover price, Life & Style, Us Weekly, which Bonnie converted from a biweekly to a weekly magazine very successfully, taking the price up, changing the editorial point of view and tone of the book, and also taking it to the next level [of] having all the celebrities wanting to be in the magazine. You take a look at the competitive set of those seven titles, and Bonnie, the [inaudible] that she did back in 2003, I thought it was a perfect investment to make to have her come over because nobody has ever changed a 60-page tabloid to a 100-page glossy magazine, and also having the Star brand going back to the Jessica Flowers[sic]-Bill Clinton days. So this is a big step, and when you take a look what Bonnie has done with the book over the years I can't think of anyone I know who's more capable and worth more dollars than her to create shareholder value for that magazine.

And then Candace Trunzo has taken over as editor in chief, and the mantle has been passed over. The magazine is more successful today that it's been when I bought it in 1999 as a tabloid, and more successful today than when Bonnie has run it over the last four years. So with the magazine, the brand is the champion. It runs on its own. You just need the right captain or admiral to steer it. I'm very pleased what Bonnie did and I wish her the best in her future ventures, what she's going to do in the future, whatever they might be.

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