Less than 24 hours after most NY papers claimed Glenda Bailey was to be replaced as the editor in chief of Harper's Bazaar, the NY Post reports today she may have dodged a bullet at Hearst Corp.

According to numbers that the company just submitted to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, its newsstand sales in the second half of 2002 were up 13.4 percent to 186,700. A company spokeswoman said it is the second consecutive newsstand increase reported by the magazine.

But the picture is not so simple. As correctly reported in NY Daily News yesterday, advertising pages were also off by 12.56 percent to 1,436. It is not clear if this drop was part of a trend in the entire fashion mags trade.

Subscriptions to HP were down 2 percent to 555,400, and as a result, total paid circulation was up a scant 1 percent to 742,100.

A Hearst spokeswoman insisted that the company is managing its circulation and that the subscription dip was by design.