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FALL 2011 COLLECTIONS The Aha Moment Designers reveal their inspirations, like Michael Kors’ “Sporty Decadence.” See page 6. MEDIA NEWS Rupert Murdoch has plowed $30 million into his iPad paper, The Daily. But he is gambling the future of News Corp. in Jesse Angelo, the 37-year- old New York newshound he chose to run it. February 3, 2011 PHOTO BY DAN D’ERRICO By JOHN KOBLIN NEW YORK — On Wednesday morning, News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch was in the base- ment at the Guggenheim Museum here and spoke like this would be a day to be remembered. He held an iPad that was opened to his lat- est ridiculously expensive invest- ment in news, The Daily, and said that it could “completely reimag- ine our craft.” It was something that would make “the business of news gathering and news editing viable again.” It would usher in an era of “new journalism.” This was a day eight months in the making for Murdoch. And ever since the idea of The Daily came to him one restless night last May, there was only one person he wanted to carry out his mission. “His idea was very simple,” said Jesse Angelo, the 37-year-old editor of The Daily. “He just came in and said, ‘Could we start a new national newspaper? No paper, no trucks. And just do it on the iPad.’ And you sort of went ‘Huh! That’s a good idea.’ I was proud and honored that he would think of me to do it.” Especially because Murdoch has given Angelo a $30 million budget, which, since Labor Day, he has partially used to assemble a team more than 100 strong. “How many times in your life do you get a chance to do that?” he asked. If The Daily is the culmination of everything that Murdoch has learned after decades in the news business — a low price point, news stories mixed with photos of babes, big sports coverage — then Angelo is the person he has chosen to make good on his promise that The Daily will change the news. Angelo has already spent most of his life in the Murdoch orbit. He’s known Murdoch’s son James since they were in kindergarten. They went to Harvard together, and Angelo was the best man at his wedding in 2000. (In his speech, Angelo, roasting James Murdoch, said, “A best friend would stop you from getting a tattoo. A best friend would stop you from starting a hip- hop label. A best friend would stop you from getting a second tattoo. A best friend would stop you from getting kicked out of Harvard.”) Rupert Murdoch is the only person Angelo has ever worked for in his career. On the surface, Angelo’s ascent looks like it was ripped right out of the Sulzberger playbook on how to groom an heir. He got educated. He did pit stops at Murdoch’s papers in England and Australia. At The New York Post, he worked his way up from stringer to executive edi- tor. It seemed only inevitable that he would get to run something. “It’s funny because you could kind of think, ‘Oh, he was able to get in and do well because he knows the Murdochs,’ ” said Jon Elsen, a former business editor at the Post and the Times, who over- saw Angelo’s time on the Post’s business desk. “I think it’s actually the opposite. I think he decided to go to News Corp. and stay at News Corp. because he’s close to the Murdochs. He probably could have gone anywhere. It’s really to the benefit to News Corp. that they had that connection with him.” CAPTION HERE Rupe and Scoop {Continued on page 8}
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Page 1: Rupe and Scoop - WordPress.com · 2015. 2. 19. · MEDIA NEWS Rupert Murdoch has plowed $30 million into his iPad paper,the Daily. But he is gambling the future of news Corp. in Jesse

Fall 2011 ColleCtions

the aha Moment Designers reveal their inspirations, like Michael Kors’ “sporty Decadence.” see page 6.

MEDIA NEWS

Rupert Murdoch has plowed $30 million into his iPad paper, the Daily. But he is gambling the future of news Corp. in Jesse angelo, the 37-year-old new York newshound he chose to run it.

February 3, 2011

photo by Dan D’Errico

By JOHN KOBLIN

NEW YORK — On Wednesday morning, News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch was in the base-ment at the Guggenheim Museum here and spoke like this would be a day to be remembered. He held an iPad that was opened to his lat-est ridiculously expensive invest-ment in news, The Daily, and said that it could “completely reimag-ine our craft.” It was something that would make “the business of news gathering and news editing viable again.” It would usher in an era of “new journalism.”

This was a day eight months in the making for Murdoch. And ever since the idea of The Daily came to him one restless night last May, there was only one person he wanted to carry out his mission.

“His idea was very simple,” said

Jesse Angelo, the 37-year-old editor of The Daily. “He just came in and said, ‘Could we start a new national newspaper? No paper, no trucks. And just do it on the iPad.’ And you sort of went ‘Huh! That’s a good idea.’ I was proud and honored that he would think of me to do it.”

Especially because Murdoch has given Angelo a $30 million budget, which, since Labor Day, he has partially used to assemble a team more than 100 strong.

“How many times in your life do you get a chance to do that?” he asked.

If The Daily is the culmination of everything that Murdoch has learned after decades in the news business — a low price point, news stories mixed with photos of babes, big sports coverage — then Angelo is the person he has chosen to

make good on his promise that The Daily will change the news.

Angelo has already spent most of his life in the Murdoch orbit. He’s known Murdoch’s son James since they were in kindergarten. They went to Harvard together, and Angelo was the best man at his wedding in 2000. (In his speech, Angelo, roasting James Murdoch, said, “A best friend would stop you from getting a tattoo. A best friend would stop you from starting a hip-hop label. A best friend would stop you from getting a second tattoo. A best friend would stop you from getting kicked out of Harvard.”) Rupert Murdoch is the only person Angelo has ever worked for in his career.

On the surface, Angelo’s ascent looks like it was ripped right out of the Sulzberger playbook on how to

groom an heir. He got educated. He did pit stops at Murdoch’s papers in England and Australia. At The New York Post, he worked his way up from stringer to executive edi-tor. It seemed only inevitable that he would get to run something.

“It’s funny because you could kind of think, ‘Oh, he was able to get in and do well because he knows the Murdochs,’ ” said Jon Elsen, a former business editor at the Post and the Times, who over-saw Angelo’s time on the Post’s business desk. “I think it’s actually the opposite. I think he decided to go to News Corp. and stay at News Corp. because he’s close to the Murdochs. He probably could have gone anywhere. It’s really to the benefit to News Corp. that they had that connection with him.”

CAPTION HERE

Rupe and Scoop

{Continued on page 8}

Page 2: Rupe and Scoop - WordPress.com · 2015. 2. 19. · MEDIA NEWS Rupert Murdoch has plowed $30 million into his iPad paper,the Daily. But he is gambling the future of news Corp. in Jesse

Men’s Week2 WWD THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 2011

STAT FACT

Value of the men’s and boys’ cotton, wool and man-made fi ber slacks and shorts imported from Egypt to the U.S. in the 12 months ended Nov. 13. That fi gure is 2.3 percent below the $254.6 million imported from Egypt in the preceding year.SOURCE: Commerce Department

$248.8 million

Raf Men’s to be Sold in New York

The outrageous outfits he wore at Torrey Pines last weekend would get him expelled from fashion school.

Print on top is advertising overkill.

Double collar with clashing colors adds to overload.

Back pleat makes shirt look like a tent.

Matching panel increases the visual pain.

Psychedelic pants would be over-the-top even for those

tripping at Woodstock.

Traditional golf shoes provide the only sense of sanity.

DESIGNER MEETS EDITOR: Naming bags after the model of the moment might be commonplace, but now magazine editors are getting in on the act. Dylan Jones, the editor of British GQ, has teamed up with Anya Hindmarch to create the designer’s fi rst men’s bag, called the Dylan Jones. The duo dish on the bag in an article in the March issue of the magazine. “I have always been obsessed with men’s accessories, because there is such a straitjacket when it comes to the limitations of what men can and will — and indeed won’t — wear,” Hindmarch says.

The resulting design is a sleek attaché case in natural brown leather, lined in woven jacquard and bound in grosgrain ribbon. Inside, it has spe-cially designed pockets for a BlackBerry, business cards, keys and a tablet computer. The bag will retail for 1,095 pounds, or $1,760 at current ex-change. Jones said of the bag: “Admittedly, it’s not like having a battleship named after you, but I would be lying if I said I wasn’t rather fl attered when Anya suggested I design a briefcase for her.”

The Dylan Jones bag is part of Hindmarch’s new Bespoke men’s collec-tion. The initial line of 50 pieces includes items such as a made-to-measure wallet, an iPad cover, document cases and travel folios. — SAMANTHA CONTI

MEMO PAD

by JEAN E. PALMIERI

ORIGINAL PENGUIN IS planning an aggressive re-tail rollout both domestically and internationally.

The brand, which was founded in 1955 and is now owned by Perry Ellis International Inc., is expecting to add around fi ve stores in key U.S. cities, as well as seven to 10 overseas units, within the next year, ac-cording to Ann Payne, senior vice president of mer-chandising and design.

“We’re looking to become stronger in our retail business,” she said. Original Penguin currently operates seven full-price stores and three outlets around the country and 27 stores globally, in South America, South Africa, the Philippines and the U.K. “We’re also looking at growing in Canada and Europe,” she added.

Payne said that although no leases have been signed, the company is look-ing at Boston and New York City, where it currently operates two units, along with San Francisco. Internationally, she said the brand hopes to expand its presence in the U.K., where it currently operates a store in London’s Covent Garden, as well as in other cities “on the Continent.” Another major push will be in Argentina and Brazil, where Original Penguin hopes to expand its presence, and in Turkey. Payne said the brand is opening a pop-up store in Istanbul later this month and will replace it with a full-price store there this summer.

Right now, Original Penguin’s sales are about even-ly split between retail and wholesale, and Payne said the wholesale business is performing quite strongly.

For spring, the brand formed a collaboration with

designer Richard Chai, who created a premium col-lection for the company. Payne said the second incar-nation of that collaboration will be shown at New York Fashion Week later this month. “It was a teaser col-lection for spring,” she said, “but now it’s a full-blown capsule collection in every category. We previewed it at Bread & Butter [in Berlin in January], and the response was great. We’re now showing it to different retailers in the U.S. and we think we will continue to do it for the next couple of seasons.”

For fall, the brand is launching denim, which will be shown at the upcoming Project show in Las Vegas.

Four fi ts will be available and the retail price will be $98. “This is new for us,” she said.

“We’re known for our tops business.” Other new moves for the brand in-

clude the debut of a fragrance at the end of March and the addition of licensed products in categories including home goods and sunglasses, Payne said. The women’s component of the collection

is also being expanded, and Original Penguin is exploring adding a children’s

collection in the States, a category that it of-fers in Europe.

Payne said the current management team, which has been in place for around two years, has worked to bring back the heritage of the label. “We’ve stopped chasing trend and gone back to the vintage roots of what we are.”

The label, which uses Pete the Penguin as its logo, had its beginnings in the Munsingwear underwear fac-tory in Minneapolis and started out as a golf brand, worn by athletes such as Arnold Palmer and celebri-ties including Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. After a hiatus, the brand was relaunched by PEI in 2003.

PARIS — Raf Simons will conduct the sales campaign for his fall 2011 men’s wear collection during New York Fashion Week — and he’s bringing new heritage and home lines, too. The Belgian designer can-celed sales appointments during men’s fashion week here last month following a split with Italy’s Futurenet Group, his partner since 2005.

A spokesman for Simons said the designer’s usual factories would produce the fall collection, which put a futuristic spin on collegiate style.

The blankets some models toted on the runway, in patterns matching their slim sweaters, form part of Raf Simons House, a new range for the home that will relate to the seasonal fashion collections. Simons trained as an industrial designer in Genk, Belgium.

The heritage collection, labeled Raf Simons 1995, consists of about 40 iconic and classic styles since the label’s inception, includ-ing schoolboy blazers, military parkas and “R” logo shirts updated for today.

New York sales are taking place at the offi ces of PR Consulting, 304 Hudson Street, from Feb. 8 to 10, and in Paris at 22 Rue Marx Dormoy from March 3 to 9, concurrent with the women’s wear shows in the French capital.

— MILES SOCHA

Original Penguin Adding To Its Stable of StoresPEI-owned brand to open five stores in U.S. and up to 10 overseas this year.

A look from Raf Simons’ fall runway.

PHOT

O BY

GIO

VANN

I GIA

NNON

I

Man of THE WEEK JOHN DALY F

Professional golfer makes a mockery of an elegant sport.

by KHANH T.L. TRAN

VERNON, Calif. — Lucky Brand is creating a more diversifi ed range as a platform to a major expan-

sion of its higher-priced Lucky Legend line.Launched four years ago with retail pric-

es starting at $119, Legend had until now been reserved for Lucky’s premium jeans made of selvage denim with elaborate, cost-

ly washes. The expanded line bowing for fall offers 20 styles each for men and women. Retail prices for Legend range from $168 to

$248 for men’s jeans, $148 to $198 for women’s jeans, $98 to $398 for women’s sportswear and jackets, $68 to $798 for men’s sportswear and outerwear and $45 to $95 for accessories. Made primarily in the U.S., Legend plans to offer four collections each year. In comparison, Lucky’s main line, which is manufactured mostly over-

seas, ships a new collection each month and costs at least 15 percent less than Legend.

“This is the fi rst time we have more than denim pieces [in Legend],” said David DeMattei, Lucky’s chief executive offi cer. “It lets us experiment with price points. It lets us see where we can go with it. Eventually, it can be a store, which is what I’d like to see with it.”

Although DeMattei didn’t provide a timeline, he said New York and Los Angeles are the leading candidates for locations of the fi rst Legend stores. Lucky will test Legend this fall in the top fi ve stores among its 183 full-priced units. The shops launching Legend are located in the Westfi eld Century City Shopping Mall in Los Angeles; King of Prussia Mall in Pennsylvania; Westchester Mall in White Plains, N.Y., and on Broadway and Prince Street in New York. By next spring, Lucky aims to widen the distribution of Legend to its top 50 freestand-ing stores and wholesale accounts.

DeMattei declined to forecast sales for Legend. Owned by Liz Claiborne Inc., Lucky reported that sales fell more than 10 percent to $275.8 million in the fi rst nine months of 2010 from a year ago.

Legend exudes a vintage, worn-in vibe with a palette limited to indigo, cream, red and brown. Tapping into the artisanal trend that emphasizes hand detailing, Legend is experimenting with tea-staining Western shirts, ripping and repairing patched jeans, hand-crocheting cotton shawl sweaters and cutting and etching leather necklaces and cuffs by hand.

Lucky Expands Via Legend

PHOT

O BY

STA

N BA

DZ/P

GA T

OUR/

GET

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AGES

Page 3: Rupe and Scoop - WordPress.com · 2015. 2. 19. · MEDIA NEWS Rupert Murdoch has plowed $30 million into his iPad paper,the Daily. But he is gambling the future of news Corp. in Jesse
Page 4: Rupe and Scoop - WordPress.com · 2015. 2. 19. · MEDIA NEWS Rupert Murdoch has plowed $30 million into his iPad paper,the Daily. But he is gambling the future of news Corp. in Jesse

FEB 14–16, 2011

MANDALAY BAY

ProjEctshow.coM

custoMEr sErvicE iNquiriEs

877.554.4834 DoMEstic

218.740.7092 iNtErNAtioNAL

[email protected]

LASVEGAS

Page 5: Rupe and Scoop - WordPress.com · 2015. 2. 19. · MEDIA NEWS Rupert Murdoch has plowed $30 million into his iPad paper,the Daily. But he is gambling the future of news Corp. in Jesse

FEB 14–16, 2011

MANDALAY BAY

ProjEctshow.coM

custoMEr sErvicE iNquiriEs

877.554.4834 DoMEstic

218.740.7092 iNtErNAtioNAL

[email protected]

LASVEGAS

Page 6: Rupe and Scoop - WordPress.com · 2015. 2. 19. · MEDIA NEWS Rupert Murdoch has plowed $30 million into his iPad paper,the Daily. But he is gambling the future of news Corp. in Jesse

6 WWD THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 2011 Men’s Week

Designers reveal their inspirations for fall.

Michael Kors

Calvin Klein Collection

Diesel Black Gold

Billy Reid

Moncler Grenoble

“The collection was inspired by the quiet nonchalance of Philip Johnson’s Glass

House. I was particularly interested in the focused palette, proportion and

geometry of the structure, as well as the idea of volume versus mass.”

— John Crocco, Perry Ellis

“Historicism made Pop.”

— Sophia Kokosalaki, Diesel Black Gold

“Sporty decadence.” — Michael Kors

“The fall 2011 collection is a wardrobe in which style blends with technique, creating a singular melding of auteurist work and performance. Distinctly ‘heritage-style’garments exude the spirit of Moncler Grenoble while being ultracontemporary.” — Moncler Grenoble

“Protection.” — Italo Zucchelli, Calvin Klein Collection

“The optimism of American

aerospace engineering.”

— Patrik Ervell

“Gram Parsons, cafe racers,

Victorian interiors, American loomed

fabrics, hand-tailored suiting,

broken-in leather, Halston and

‘Bring Me the Head of Alfredo

Garcia.’ ” — Billy Reid

“Soft tailoring that wraps the body.” — Steven Cox and Daniel Silver, Duckie Brown

Patrik Ervell

Duckie Brown

Perry Ellis

The Aha MomentCompiled by Luis Campuzano

FOR MORE DESIGNER INSPIRATIONS, SEE

WWD.com/MENSWEAR-NEWS.

Page 7: Rupe and Scoop - WordPress.com · 2015. 2. 19. · MEDIA NEWS Rupert Murdoch has plowed $30 million into his iPad paper,the Daily. But he is gambling the future of news Corp. in Jesse

Men’s Week 7WWD THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 2011

wning a bunch of destination nightclubs and having maga-zines ask for your top picks of cool things to do is one of the holy grails of Manhattan man-hood. It’s the stuff egos and power trips are made of. One

of Carlos Quirarte’s favorite parties in the late Nineties was at Spa, where the door was guarded by Steve Lewis. “He would point to people and say, ‘If you had his head and his body, maybe you could come in,’” says Quirarte, who possessed neither ideal but was let in anyway.

That’s not Quirarte and his part-ner Matt Kliegman’s style. They didn’t get from marketing a denim brand and investing in real estate at J.P. Morgan, respectively, to the top of New York’s nightlife food chain by being jerks. Their Bond Street restaurant is named The Smile, after all.

Playing nice has made them very important fi xtures on the New York scene — just ask The New York Times, T magazine, Blackbook and Interview. In 2009 they conquered downtown lunch and, perhaps more importantly, brunch with The Smile, an urban rustic hole in the wall that also sells yarn. Then they opened the Jane Ballroom, which New York Magazine recently put on its “Reasons to Love New York” list. It draws the predictable comparisons to the hey-day of the Beatrice Inn, and one Web site went so far as to declare “the Jane saved nightlife.” So you can imagine what the reaction will be when Kliegman and Quirarte open their latest venture next month, the Westway, a dance club packaged with the novelty titillation of a strip club. But a cool one.

“The fact that it is a topless, go-go dance place is secondary,” says Quirarte. “It’s the same way that music is sort of in the back-ground. That’s how we think of it.”

The details, including the naked ladies, still need to be worked out, but there will defi nite-ly be four stripper poles, and Kliegman and Quirarte want them maximized. In December they had a test run for Opening Ceremony’s holiday party, which was a hit except for the stripper who only swayed in place, which they imitate simultaneously with sad little back and forth motions, while another dancer gave it her all with full helicopter spins. “Helicopter spins seemed to go over real-ly well,” says Kliegman.

The supposed night-life kings look like average, casual guys during dinner at The Smile on a Tuesday night, where they’re eating with seven of their friends, all peo-ple who know people, but definitely seem to know each other well. There’s Kimball Hastings of Ralph

Lauren and his boyfriend, Nicolas Henderson, an artist; Omar Gonzalez, who works at Focus Features; Quirarte’s girlfriend, Mariko Munro, co-director of 303 Gallery, and the stylist Heidi Bivens and her boyfriend, actor-screenwriter Justin Theroux. It’s a stylish group, with every-one belonging to the fashion, art, fi lm or night-life worlds.

Kliegman describes Theroux and Quirarte’s relationship as a typical bromance. They take long motorcycle rides together and have match-ing tattoos of the man on Zig-Zag rolling pa-pers, which they show off with pride. Tonight,

they’re curled up at one end of the table cracking each other up on the subjects of yoga, star signs and puppies, but in a dude humor way. Just like Kliegman and Quirarte, Theroux has a beard. In fact, almost

all the men at the table do. Kliegman and Quirarte both have the fash-

ionably disheveled look that’s achieved through a calculated combination of trying really hard and trying not at all. Long hair, full beard, rumpled utility-ish shirt and a hat. There is a certain willful lack of grooming involved. Quirarte is short and stout and has a Jack Black quality — but thinner — with intense eyes and a big laugh, although at the end of the night someone walks by and tells him he looks like Rembrandt, to which he responds with more laughter. His girlfriend is pretty. And he’s funny. So is Kliegman, but in a quieter way. Carlos says that even though Matt is younger (27 to Quirarte’s 34), he’s kind of like the dad. He got Carlos to start a savings account. When dinner is over, Matt gets up and pays, giving one of the waitresses a hug and a kiss when she passes by. The duo have been friends since their freshman year at NYU.

Friends are important to Kliegman and Quirarte, and not just because their crew, which includes Nate Lowman, the artist (who dated an Olsen), and Matt Creed, a DJ and Kliegman’s roommate (who dated Kirsten Dunst), sets a desirable tone for their clubs. Partying with people they know was the whole reason they got into this business, back when it was just a “prac-tical way to see your friends and drink for free,” says Kliegman.

But with success has come a few adjust-ments to that philosophy. First, the Jane isn’t

strictly a who-you-know place. “I don’t want to hang out with the same people every night,” says Quirarte. “It’s not supposed to be like some dormito-ry.” Second, when run-ning a business where making money is key, you can have too many friends. “At fi rst it felt weird to make them pay,” says Quirarte. Not anymore.

Boys’ Night OutBy Jessica Iredale

Tommy Hilfi ger

Robert Geller

“The air of luxury, refi nement and restraint present in the fi lms of Visconti.” — Robert Geller

“Inspired by a young JFK.” — Tommy Hilfi ger

“Cabin fever.” — Nicholas Kunz, Nicholas K

Nicholas K

PHOT

OS B

Y LE

XIE

MOR

ELAN

D

The Nice Guys of Nightlife

OCarlos Quirarte and Matt Kliegman’s New York scenebegan with a Smile; next up: strippers.

Carlos Quirarte and Matt Kliegman at The Smile.

Carlos Quirarte and Matt Kliegman at The Smile.

Inside The Smile.

Page 8: Rupe and Scoop - WordPress.com · 2015. 2. 19. · MEDIA NEWS Rupert Murdoch has plowed $30 million into his iPad paper,the Daily. But he is gambling the future of news Corp. in Jesse

8 WWD thursday, february 3, 2011 Men’s Week

Around 10 years ago, then Post editor in chief Xana Antunes had a meeting with Angelo, who was then deputy business edi-tor. He had only been at the paper for a few years, but he’d received lots of good reviews, and she wanted to find a way to get him on the news desk. She was thinking about a few options and, after several minutes of hem-ming and hawing, finally asked him, “Well, what do you want to do?”

“I want to do whatever I need to do to get into your job,” said Angelo, according to sev-eral people familiar with the meeting.

He was in his late 20s, but he was ambi-tious. He made no secret that one day he wanted to be editor of his favorite news-paper, the Post. And colleagues of Angelo’s throughout the years said there wasn’t much resentment, despite his decidedly un-Post-like upbringing.

Angelo was born in 1973 and grew up on Central Park West. His father, John Angelo, founded the firm Angelo, Gordon & Co., which today manages about $23 billion in as-sets. John Angelo also kept powerful compa-ny and has been lifelong friends with Michael Eisner and the former Disney chief is Jesse’s godfather. Judy Hart Angelo, Jesse’s mother, is the co-writer of theme songs for “Cheers,” “Mr. Belvedere” and “Punky Brewster.” Both of Jesse’s parents have served on elite boards in New York: John is on the board of direc-tors at Sotheby’s, along with James Murdoch and Diana Taylor; Judy has been on the boards of Central Park Conservancy and the Manhattan Theater Club. They currently live in The Dakota.

Angelo attended the Trinity School, but it wasn’t until he was about 15 that he started getting into journalism. “In high school, I just started reading papers and fell in love with them,” he recalled.

After his sophomore year at Harvard, Angelo took a year off from school and went to London to work at the best-selling paper in the U.K., Murdoch’s tabloid, The Sun. It was a typical entry-level gig (fetched coffee, tagged along with reporters, learned shorthand) and, after 10 months, he was so seduced by the Sun that he wanted to stay behind and leave school, but his mother suggested that wasn’t the best idea. He went back to college.

At Harvard, Angelo was a history and literature major and wrote his thesis on an obscure bit of journalism history about two New York newspapers being shut down by the government in 1864 after they published something called “The Bogus Proclamation.”

After graduation, his immersion in all things Murdoch only deepened — he went to Sydney to work for Murdoch’s paper, The Daily Telegraph, which was edited by Col Allan.

“Obviously I wanted to stay with the com-pany,” Angelo said, “and it just seemed like a place to learn more. I think they train jour-nalists down there really, really, really well.”

There he covered what any good tab-loid reporter would: murder, mayhem, de-struction. It’s also where the Ivy League grad learned the art of writing for one of Murdoch’s papers. Take, for example, a lede from a story published 14 years ago with the headline, “Family Finds Love on the Ocean Waves”: “For the Ward fam-ily, true love always will be inextricably intertwined with the cruise ship Fairstar. Daughter Michelle and father Michael both were struck by Cupid’s arrow while walking the polished wooden decks of Australia’s most fabled fun ship.”

In 1999, he came back to New York and desperately knocked at the door of the Post to find a job. “He loved the Post and thought it was the best paper in town and he really believed it. He wasn’t even joking,” said one former colleague. There were no job open-ings at first, so he became a stringer for Page Six before a spot opened up on the Sunday paper. He worked briefly as a general as-signment reporter, and then began to cover business. Angelo later told friends and col-leagues that he felt like he wasn’t a very

good reporter. Nevertheless, he caught the attention of his editor.

“He was this whirlwind,” said Elsen, the Post’s business editor back then. “He was ob-viously very smart, he was enterprising and he’s coming in every day with tons of ideas for stories.”

One thing that more than a dozen people interviewed for this story said is that Angelo put in lots and lots of hours on the job. Elsen said when it came time to hire a deputy, no one told him to promote Angelo along. Elsen simply wanted the guy with all the ideas. He made Angelo his deputy.

“Given his relationship with the Murdochs, given that his father is a very suc-cessful hedge fund manager and his family is close to Michael Eisner, he was the hardest working guy on the staff,” said Elsen. “I ad-mired his skill and talent.”

After Allan took over the Post in April 2001, Angelo was quickly promoted to metro editor. And when you took a look at the Post-reporter-turned-editor, colleagues said that the rich kid from the Upper West Side could be mistaken for any disheveled Post reporter.

“He was this sort of gruff, archetypal tabloid editor,” said former Postie and cur-rent Times reporter Tim Arango, reflect-ing on the first time he met Angelo at the Post’s watering hole, Langan’s. “He seemed like someone who has newspaper ink in his veins. He was smoking and all that. I had no idea about his background or anything, but he struck me as how I would have imagined the metro editor at the Post being like.”

If someone from Angelo’s background needed to cultivate that look, then he just as quickly lost it as he rose the managerial ranks. Colleagues said he stopped smoking. He lost weight. He cleaned up. His suits were nicer. He started going gray. Instead of goofing off with staffers or logging long hours at Langan’s, he became more distant and spent less time with the regular folk, accord-ing to several sources. The messy desk start-ed getting neater. The goatee has evolved into a mustache and a soul patch.

“It seemed like it was by design,” said one Post colleague. “It’s like something they

teach in management school.”And like any striver worth his salt, Angelo

had the perfect ally in Allan. One colleague described their relationship as “father and son.” Elsen said that Angelo was Allan’s “disciple.” Certainly, the relationship was mutually beneficial. Angelo got time with a bizarre, short-tempered and brilliant tabloid editor; Allan got to oversee a rising star that Rupert Murdoch held dearly.

“Col’s a great editor and he’s good friend,” said Angelo. “We worked very, very close to-gether for a long time. I’ve learned an enor-mous amount from him. Look, we got to cover 9/11 and two wars and the blackout and the plane in the Hudson and a lot of big stories together. We’ve had a pretty amazing run.”

As an editor, Post staffers said that Allan made his mark on Angelo. They said Angelo operates by the gut (“Do this story, not that one”); he can be impatient; he can some-times be mean.

“He motivated people a little bit with fear,” said Arango. “He had that attitude and that aggression.”

“The whole place is run on fear,” said a Post staffer. “That is the management style he learned under.”

Nevertheless, Angelo served as an im-portant buffer between Allan and the rest of the paper, and he was — virtually across the board — well-liked and well-respected.

Angelo is a private person. He rarely does interviews, and though he was an oc-casionally jovial spokesman for The Daily on Wednesday at the Guggenheim, it wasn’t hard to tell he probably wished he was somewhere else. When an ex-girlfriend, Bridget Harrison, wrote about him in a book, “Tabloid Love: Looking for Mr. Right in All the Wrong Places,” he was reportedly very unhappy about it. Throughout the years at the Post, few people heard him talk about his life, unless he was directly asked.

It’s hard to tell why. Maybe it’s because Angelo believes that the only truly power-ful people are the ones who you don’t really know, or maybe it’s because to make it in journalism (especially at the Post), he didn’t want anyone to play up his background. Either way, a person who could have had a perfectly comfortable life, decided to make it work in — of all places — newspapers, and now’s he got the big job — a venture nurtured by Murdoch, on which the media mogul no doubt is willing to spend millions more.

Certainly Angelo is confident it will work. “I believe very strongly that if you want

people to come back to your product every day, you have to make them think and you have to make them smile,” said Angelo. “That’s what I want to read every day. I want to be challenged and I want to learn something I didn’t know before and I want to be entertained and I want to be amused. We’ll have punchy, funny headlines, we’re going to have some wit and verve and atti-tude, but that doesn’t mean we can’t run a 1,500-word analysis of Afghanistan. I think good news products can shift seamlessly be-tween them.”

Now he has to pull it off.

jesse angelo: murdoch’s main man{Continued from page 1}

“I believe very strongly that if you want people to come back to your product every day, you have to make them think and you have to make them smile.” — jesse angelo

News Corp. chief digital officer Jon Miller and Jesse Angelo.

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