Ms.-steps   

Tracy Wood steps down after four months as editor in chief of the feminist magazine to focus on investigative projects.

Four months into the job as editor in chief of Ms. (see Bylines, September), Tracy Wood steps down to concentrate on developing investigative projects at the feminist magazine. Meanwhile, production on the relaunch issue, which was to have debuted in October, is shifted from Ms.' new Los Angeles offices to a consulting firm in New York headed by Anne Mollegen Smith. Smith, a former editor of Working Woman, McCall's and Redbook, is a friend of Ms. founder and current consulting editor Gloria Steinem. "Whatever happened, it's my responsibility," says Wood, a longtime investigative reporter and editor who has spent her career in daily journalism and will only give her age as "mid-50s." "We only had 12 weeks, which is just like no time" for a relaunch, she says, especially when you're also trying to hire staff and work out the bugs in new quarters. "We could have put out a magazine, but it would not have been at the Ms. top standards." Smith says the issue should hit newsstands Christmas Eve.