The New York Observer, chronicler of the ups and downs of Manhattan socialites, is on the block.
The paper is the alma mater of some of New York’s most famous writers, including Sex and the City author Candace Bushnell and Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter.
For 18 years the paper has been picking over the successes and failures of the city’s elite, lampooning them with its trademark giant-headed caricatures.
But in recent years the Observer has found itself competing with sharp-elbowed websites as well as New York’s established media. Circulation has stalled and its billionaire founder, Arthur Carter, has a new passion — sculpting. So the Observer is looking for a new owner.
It’s causing quite a stir in a small, if very influential, circle. Editor Peter Kaplan said a number of millionaires and billionaires had already been on the phone.
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The Anglo-Dutch publisher Reed Elsevier has been mentioned as a possible contender. Reed owns Variety, Hollywood’s local paper, which, like the Observer, can seem impenetrable to outsiders. So adding the Observer as an east coast interest might not seem too much of a stretch. Executives at the company declined to comment, but one insider said a deal was unlikely.
Bruce Wasserstein, chairman of Lazard, the investment bank, has also been approached. Wasserstein’s private-equity firm snapped up New York magazine for $385m (£216m) last year. The portly banker now owns a mixed portfolio of titles, including American Lawyer, The Daily Deal and National Hog Farmer.
The Observer’s circulation has stalled at 45,000 and it loses about $2m a year but it has attracted rich suitors in the past, keen to court its elite readers.
The fallen press baron Lord Black made an attempt to buy the title in 1999. When the deal fell through, he was, according to biographer Richard Siklos, apoplectic at losing his “passport to the social scene in New York”.
But not all of Manhattan’s media elite are enamoured of the title.
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Vanity Fair media commentator Michael Wolff said: “I can’t imagine that anyone is interested. It’s a non-business, it loses money and it has no readers. It’s the ultimate vanity publication. It’s playing at being in the newspaper business. As a paper it gives me the creeps. It’s aimed at such a narrow set of people, of which admittedly I’m one.”
Wolff said websites such as Gawker.com and Jossip.com had made the paper irrelevant. “It’s some odd ancient dinosaur,” he said.
Kaplan said: “Wolff loved the paper until the day he got a bad book review. Ask Tina Brown (former Vanity Fair and New Yorker editor) what she thinks, or Harry Evans (former Sunday Times editor and husband of Brown).
“There is a certain kind of New Yorker who thinks of themselves as an insider — we write for them. Our audience is a media and power elite that wants a newspaper that talks to them the same way that reporters talk to each other,” he said.
Kaplan said Carter had long wanted to bring in a partner. “The paper has tremendous strengths but it needs a kick up the butt to make it to the next level. And that means money.”
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He said the paper was under no pressure to find a buyer, but “Arthur is listening. If there is someone out there who knows how to make it into a real business, he’d be thrilled”.
Carter made a fortune as Sandy Weill’s partner at the high-powered investment banking firm Carter, Berlind, Potoma & Weill. Weill went on to chair Citigroup.
Carter moved into publishing and is now a successful sculptor who has exhibited in New York and Paris.
Kaplan said he was confident that eventually the Observer would manage to find another deep-pocketed suitor.
“We’ve had a tremendous number of calls from millionaires and billionaires. There are a lot of people who think it would be fun to run a newspaper. Ever see Citizen Kane?”