Top Editor Out At OK!
Celebrity-friendly photo-heavy gossip rag OK! just can't find any stability in this cold world! Its latest editor has been fired, just months after taking over. (Updated below)
Susan Toepfer was reportedly fired today, just seven issues after she moved from the shuttered Quick & Simple and took over for Sarah Ivens. The entire team of sub-editors that Toepfer brought with her are reportedly being let go as well.
None of this looks good for Kent Brownridge, the former Jann Wenner deputy who joined OK! as its GM last September. We heard in November that OK's billionaire British publisher Richard Desmond actually deigned to come and personally investigate why Brownridge wasn't doing well. By December, OK! was hastily cutting back the number of issues it publishes—not a sign of profitability.
Whoever comes next has a thankless job. [Fashion Week Daily]
UPDATE: Sarah Ivens is back! She had previously gotten fed up with Richard Desmond, we hear, and went to live in Kentucky with her husband. But they've settled their differences, apparently, because she's back as EIC. Kent Brownridge, however—who was making a million bucks a year, we hear, while losing the company millions more—is out.]