Steve Wanamaker, publisher of Inspire magazine, would like to set the record straight: The magazine is not teetering on the brink of financial ruin, the May/June issue will definitely come out and circulation is 18,000, not 500.

He is responding to statements made in a lawsuit filed April 27 and reported here May 2. Attorney Randy Freking filed the suit, suing the magazine to get former staffer Ivy Nesbit released from her "no compete clause" so she could go to work for Cincinnati magazine.

The May/June issue is here now, more than 250 pages and looking plenty healthy. In keeping with its goal to attract upscale readers, it has a great story on an Indian Hill house currently on the market for $11.7 million, another one on the Taft Museum of Art reopening and a lot of upscale party updates.

And furthermore, Wanamaker adds, the lawsuit has been settled and Nesbit is free to go to work for Cincinnati.

New in town

That didn't take long. Cincinnati magazine already has a new editor. He's Jay Stowe, taking over for Kitty Morgan, editor since 1997, who announced her resignation in early April.

Stowe, a native Cincinnatian who has been out of town awhile, arrives here packing some impressive credentials. He's currently executive editor of Outside magazine, formerly an editor of the New York Observer and associate editor of the music magazine Spin.

He's also worked at Esquire and Smart. In 2003 he was named one of 10 young editors to watch by the Columbia Journalism Review.

Stowe starts his new job June 14.

Morgan, meanwhile, is moving to New York to join husband Charles Desmarais, former Contemporary Arts Center director now on sabbatical there.

Filming here

Did you see the film crew from History Detectives running around town Wednesday? The show, a cross between Antiques Roadshow and a really good detective series, examines an old object and has one of its experts solve the mystery of its lineage.

Last week the show was here shooting Cincinnatian Wes Cowan, owner of Cowan's Historic Americana Auctions, specializing in historical ephemera of all sorts. Cowan is a regular on Detectives and a frequent guest on Roadshow.

The show shot him with a nicely preserved Western-style saddle believed to have been owned by Confederate Gen. John Hunt Morgan, who became famous for his raids into Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio in 1863.

Cowan unravels the mystery (you'll have to wait for the show, airing at a date to be announced) and also reveals that his great-grandfather was one of Morgan's Raiders and was arrested with Morgan after one of those sorties.

More visitors

Speaking of film crews, Japan's Nippon TV will have one in town Monday to do a cicada story.

The occasion is a press conference to unveil SuperCicada, mascot of the 2004 emergence. The press conference will also announce a series of Cicada Escape Zone happy hours and introduce the media to Seventeen Year Itch, the "We Ain't Fraida the Cicada" CD done by four local acts.

WKRC ( Channel 12) will also be there, filming for itself and for CBS Sunday Morning, to air June 6.

Channel 9 celebration

Channel 9 reporter Deb Haas is looking for former WCPO employees who might want to party with her. The occasion is the station's move from Central Avenue to Gilbert Avenue (today's 11 p.m. news will be the first broadcast from the new building).

Haas, it develops, is organizing a last ditch party at the old studios 1-4 p.m. May 22 and inviting all former employees in for a bit of socializing and a final walk-through.

Call Haas (852-4071) or e-mail her (dhaas@wcpo.com) to get on the guest list.

The old building will be razed to make way for expansion of the convention center.

E-mail jknippenberg@enquirer.com