Steve Florio's Trashy Tell All



Above: The Gehry-designed CondeNasteteria, where all Conde Nast dish stylishly resides. (image via CCC.VIT.Fr)

Old soldiers never die, they live on to settle outstanding scores in their trashy memoirs. And in 25 years of publishing the glossiest of the glossies, a lot of enemies can be made by a former lieutenant of "Mr. Bozack" (winkwink). Although most of the power players involved in Steve Florio's "memoir-cum-management treatise" (Machiavelli's Prince?) are no longer in power or, worse, are tending sheep in Vermont, it still supposedly sizzles ... somewhat. As much as can be expected, we suppose. According to WWD (link via Poynter):

"Steve Florio may not call the shots at Conde Nast anymore, but that doesn't mean he's out of ammunition. Clearly, he saved some choice volleys for his book, a memoir-cum-management treatise that draws heavily on his time running business operations first at GQ, then The New Yorker and, finally, across all of Conde Nast ...

"... Judging from a pitch and excerpt obtained by WWD, one person who will not be eager to see the book hit shelves is Ron Galotti. In a chapter titled 'Managing Mr. Big,' Florio, now vice chairman, thoroughly disses his former underling � the subject of both his best and worst decisions at Conde Nast. Florio writes, 'The story of Ron Galotti is the story of how celebrity can ruin a perfectly good executive.' As publisher of Vogue (Florio's best decision), he says, Galotti was a brilliantly effective, if at times too aggressive, ad salesman. But after leaving in 1998 to start Talk with Tina Brown, 'Ron started believing his own bulls--t,' Florio writes. Hiring him back to be publisher of GQ in 2001 was 'the worst decision I ever made as president and ceo ... The magazine needed someone with a very steady hand, and Ron didn't have it anymore.'

"... Reached at his home in Vermont, a piqued Galotti responded with some jabs of his own. 'He can print anything he wants, I guess,' he said. "The really wonderful thing about it is, since it's Steve Florio's book, no one will read it."

Entirely correct, by the way. Bucolic Vermont ... it breeds a certain wisdom in even the most Byronic of temperaments, which, by all reports, Galotti had. And of Bonnie Fuller, Florio writes:

" ... Bonnie Fuller, former editor in chief of Glamour: 'She damn near killed the magazine. She made it trashy as hell.'"

Trashy like a fox! And ... leaves just as many crumbs.