Memo Pad: Delay Again... Back On... Not So Fast, But Steady

DELAYED AGAIN: On Monday, American Media Operations Inc. filed yet another notification of late filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company noted that because of the restated financial statements made earlier this year, it has been delayed in preparing and filing the subsequent periodic reports required. AMI has yet to file a report for the third quarter ended Dec. 31, 2006, and its annual report for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2007, will be delayed. The company also will incur a significant non-cash impairment charge during the third quarter of fiscal 2007 related to its goodwill, trade names and other identified intangibles. In the second quarter, AMI took a charge of $147 million relating to the impairment of trade names and goodwill of National Enquirer, Star, Weekly World News, Country Weekly, National Examiner, Sun and MiniMag. — Amy Wicks

BACK ON: The contract tug-of-war is officially over and Charlotte Ronson is now "100 percent committed" to the upcoming Soapnet show, "The Fashionista Diaries." A few weeks ago, the designer's role on the show came into question after an executive producer at Go Go Luckey Productions said Ronson was off the program and another "big-name designer" was in. The producer said that "we just couldn't get a contract that worked" with Ronson. But a Soapnet spokeswoman confirmed to WWD on Monday that the designer will be on the show, which originally was described as following six assistants from Jane magazine, Flirt Cosmetics and Seventh House PR as they produce Ronson's fashion show and after party for New York Fashion Week in September. The spokeswoman added that more designers will also be featured, but declined to provide more details. "The Fashionista Diaries" will begin airing on Aug. 1. — A.W.

NOT SO FAST, BUT STEADY: Six months into the tenure of Robert Safian as Fast Company editor in chief, the magazine has moved into new digs and made a few moves at the top. Will Bourne has been promoted to executive editor from deputy editor, with outgoing executive editor Keith Hammonds moving to the role of contributing editor. Charles Fishman, formerly a senior writer who won his second Loeb Award for a Fast Company story last month, will now be editor at large. (Safian, who has been working to raise the magazine's profile, surrendered to media awards-show cliché when he called the Loebs "the Oscars of business journalism" in a press release.)

Along with sister publication Inc., the magazine has moved to new offices in 7 World Trade Center, whose sleek and green-certified accoutrements can be seen in a slide show on the Fast Company Web site entitled "Welcome to the Future." Safian's editor's letter in the June issue, his first, noted that "some staffers at our company chose not to move with us; the memories were too harsh. But I feel differently. For a magazine like Fast Company, there is no more fitting location for our headquarters: a place that is all about rebirth and potential and the promise of tomorrow."

Under Mansueto Ventures LLC, the magazine has been slowly regrouping from its previous struggles: despite the business category's well-covered travails, Fast Company's ad pages were up 9.1 percent from January through March compared with 2006, and its newsstand sales rose 37.4 percent in the second half of 2006, to 22,134. (Of course, picking a magazine back up lends itself to big percentages; in the flusher days of the dot-com era, the newsstand average could triple that figure. But that was then — at the time of Mansueto Ventures' purchase, in June 2005, newsstand sales had shrunk to the mid-teens.) Total circulation was flat at 736,458. — Irin Carmon

NEW RECRUITS: Two recent media acquisitions by private equity firms — that of Dennis Publishing and Reader's Digest Association — continue to make executive waves. Carolyn Kremins, who was named publisher of Cookie in March, has looked back to her old home of Dennis for one of her associate publishers: Amy Newman, who was associate publisher of marketing and creative services for Maxim, will now serve in a similar capacity at Cookie. Heddy Sams, who was the associate publisher for advertising at Cookie, followed former Cookie publisher Eva Dillon to Reader's Digest, also in March.

Separately, Blair Hecht Schlumbom was named associate publisher for advertising of Gourmet magazine last week, succeeding Tom Hartman, who was promoted to publisher. — I.C.