Bloody Tuesday and Wednesday

Bloody Tuesday and Wednesday And Thursday and Friday and . . .

Since French Publisher Daniel Filipacchi revived Look magazine in February, seven years after it folded, the glossy, large-format biweekly has been a nice place to visit, but not many journalists managed to live there. Fifteen editorial employees were fired or forced out, including Managing Editor John Durniak; Executive Editor Marianne Partridge resigned after five issues. For a time, new sackings seemed to come at the end of every week, a ritual that became known around the magazine's Manhattan offices as "Black Friday."

Last week most of the survivors never made it to Friday. Filipacchi turned the editorial and financial management of Look (arc. 650,000) over to Jann Wenner, 33, editor and publisher of Rolling Stone, the rock-music tabloid. Wenner will receive an unspecified fee and a share in any future profits--but no stock--and has agreed to lend Look $500,000. Filipacchi, who publishes Paris Match and eleven other French journals, will retain 51% ownership of the magazine (six French partners control the rest). Wenner will remain Rolling Stone's editor and publisher, assume those titles at Look, and merge the two publications' advertising, circulation and administrative staffs.

No sooner had Wenner taken over at Look on Tuesday than he barricaded himself in a corner office and had a secretary summon editorial staff members one by one. Within hours he had fired 19 of 34, plus the summoning secretary. Over the next few days, nearly 80 full-time and part-time staffers on the business side were dismissed by Wenner aides. Stunned victims, who received one or two weeks of severance pay, were calling it the "Jonestown Roll Call" and the "French Terror." Said Kevin Buckley, 38, sacked as a senior editor: "There were several of us who had been freshly executed, and Wenner came by and said, 'It's been nice working with you guys.' "

By way of explanation, Wenner and Filipacchi announced that beginning with the July issue, Look will switch from biweekly to monthly publication, a move they said justifies deep staff cuts. Look's start-up costs have already topped $7 million, and losses are mounting at the rate of $300,000 an issue. The magazine received cautious initial praise for its mix of photos, articles about politics and medicine, and timely profiles, but lately the celebrity fluff has gained ground. Admitted former Editor and President Robert Gutwillig, 47, who remains a consultant to Filipacchi: "If we had done a better job, we would have sold more copies."

Wenner's previous foray into the slick-page magazine world ended last year, when he sold his hemorrhaging Outside, a monthly for campers and environmentalists, to its rival, Mariah. At his flagship Rolling Stone (circ. 620,000), advertising pages are up 18% from last year, but the maturing Wunderkind is said to have considered selling it and spending more time on his fledgling career as a movie producer. Yet last week Wenner seemed to be relishing his new role at Look, predicting that a subscription drive would push circulation to 1 million by next spring. He said that the magazine would be aimed more squarely at "younger people, urbane people, urban people,' and would avoid the excesses of celebrity journalism. He promised: "We are not going to have Farrah Fawcett-Majors on the cover, or any of Charlie's Angels."

Long before heads began rolling at Look, magazine editing was a particularly peripatetic calling. Among editors who this month have added new chapters to their eventful job histories:

> Byron Dobell, 52, went from executive editor to managing editor of Esquire, where he was an editor in the mid-'60s after a stint at TIME-LIFE Books and before detours at New York magazine, TIME-LIFE Books (again), Esquire (again) and LIFE.

> Sam Angeloff, 39, was dropped as editor of Us last week after a career that took him in three years from LIFE to PEOPLE to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

> Peter Janssen, 41, the executive editor now running Us, has in the past decade moved from Newsweek to Saturday Review to TIME to MONEY to Parents.

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