<i>New York</i>: Judith Regan Fired Over Mickey Mantle Book

Then New York Daily News has details from New York's upcoming behind-the-scenes story on the Judith Regan firing, and apparently it's wasn't the universally-reviled O.J. Simpsonbook that sank her, but the camel's-back-breaking-straw that was the planned biography of Mickey Mantle which starred the former baseball legend as the foul-mouthed, sex-crazed narrator (with a hook-up with Maryilyn Monroe to boot). Though Mantle's past (and own admissions) certainly supported such a characterization, the "supposed sullying of Mantle's name hit the cover of the Daily News" and Harper Collins' CEO Jane Friedman apparently "hit the roof" per the New York article by Vanessa Grigoriadis.

The piece, titled "Judith Regan: The Devil and O.J. Simpson" in what is either a nod to or an awkward coincidence with the seminal Vanity Fair feature on Regan, "The Devil And Miss Regan," also reports that HarperCollins staffers applauded when they were told of Regan's firing, that Regan was the last to know (staffers who thought she'd been escorted from the building goggled at her sitting at her desk eating a sandwich, oblivious). Grigoriadis describes the situation as a "knives-out corporate power struggle," culminating in the dramatic termination of Regan late on a Friday afternoon, right before the NewsCorp holiday party (here the News gets in a dig at the Post: "And it fell on the day News Corp. employees, including the staff of the money-losing New York Post, were celebrating their holiday party in New York's Hilton Hotel.")

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