Look Down

And very possibly out

Was something wrong at Look magazine last week? A secretary answered the phone with a chirpy "Paris Match." An assistant editor showed up for his first day of work only to find that he had already been laid off. Somewhere between Los Angeles and Georgia, a freelance writer was motorcycling to an assignment, unaware that his editors had been fired and were commiserating in a Manhattan gin mill. By way of explanation, Look's owners announced blandly that the magazine was "undergoing reorganization." They promised to keep publishing, but hardly anyone on Madison Avenue believed them.

The latest--and possibly last--chapter in one of the most expensive and convulsive magazine start-ups in years was written in red ink. Look Board Chairman Daniel Filipacchi, 51, publisher of Paris Match and ten other French magazines, abruptly canceled a two-month-old management agreement with Rolling Stone, the rock music tabloid. Under that deal, Rolling Stone had been running Look in return for a monthly fee of $50,000.

With losses approaching $10 million so far and with Rolling Stone Editor and Publisher Jann Wenner, 33, saying he needed at least $5 million more over the next three years to push Look (circ. 650,000) into the black, Filipacchi and his six French partners decided to turn off the money tap. At the end, Rolling Stone tried to buy the magazine, offering more than $ 1 million over the next five years, but negotiations broke down, and Wenner was, in effect, sacked. He thus joined a large fraternity: more than 50 editorial employees and some 100 business staffers have been given the ax since Look resumed publication in February, seven years after it folded the first time.

Look's July issue, Wenner's first, was a slapdash affair put together in seven days. Its cover story on Clint Eastwood amounted to an enormous plug for Paramount Pictures, with whom Wenner has a contract as an executive producer. But the more elegantly designed August issue (on sale next week) shows an imaginative flair and a sound grasp of what is trendy among affluent young adults. Sally Field is the cover girl, and inside stories hopscotch from adventure (intrigue in Asia) to books (Author William Styron) to fashion ("freak chic"). Said Managing Editor Christine Doudna, 35: "It is what we could have become."

And still may become, if Wenner has his way. In the bittersweet aftermath of Look's collapse, he was glowing about the August issue ("fabulous"), elegizing the staff ("great") and promising to start another glossy picture magazine, possibly with the Look logo, as early as September 1980. Said he: "We're going to do it again, launched in proper fashion." qed

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