IT'S TRUE: BUZZ FOLDS; RIVAL TO BUY ASSETS.

Byline: Enrique Rivero Daily News Staff Writer

The Buzz has died.

On Tuesday, the staff at Buzz magazine - the 8-year-old monthly offering a mix of personality profiles, fashion, show business and local politics - learned that the owners of the magazine have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and agreed to sell the assets to Walt Disney Co.'s Los Angeles magazine.

The bankruptcy hearing is expected to be held around May 20, according to Scott Kramer, president of Buzz Inc. The magazine's 36 employees, who learned of the publication's fate at a noon meeting, spent the rest of the day cleaning out their desks. Kramer said all employees will be paid.

``It basically caught us off guard, as far as the filing of Chapter 11 and this whole contract for the sale of the assets to L.A. magazine,'' Kramer said. ``There was no idea of this.''

Los Angeles magazine is owned by Disney's Fairchild Publications. Officials with New York-based Fairchild could not be reached for comment.

Buzz, named for the guessing about movie prospects among Hollywood insiders, dubbed itself ``the talk of Los Angeles'' and often used a gossipy style of reporting. It usually ran a cover shot of a young female movie star - the current issue featured Milla Jovovich - and carried a newsstand price of $3.

The magazine's Buzz Weekly, which was distributed free of charge and featured entertainment listings, stopped publication about a month ago after nearly a year in circulation. Eden Collinsworth, the magazine's founder and chief executive, said earlier this year that Buzz had just started to break even.

In February, Buzz gained national notice when it agreed to a deal with Paramount Pictures calling for the studio to provide the magazine with a discretionary fund for in-depth articles with potential to become movies. In return, Buzz gave Paramount first crack at buying the movie rights to those articles and others.

Buzz also struck a deal with a management production company to shop articles declined by Paramount to other studios.

Although studios have used magazine articles increasingly in recent years as the basis for movies, some media critics said the arrangement - believed to be the first of its kind between a publication and a studio - would compromise the magazine's ability to offer unbiased reporting. But Collinsworth said at the time that Paramount's money had no strings attached.

The closure of Buzz, which had a circulation of 145,000, comes on the heels of the magazine's triumph last week at the Western Publishing Association awards ceremony, where it won ``Maggies'' for best city or regional publication and best overall consumer publication, Kramer said. Ironically, it beat Los Angeles magazine.

``The whole thing is very sad - we worked very hard here,'' Kramer said.

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PHOTO (Color) no caption (Cover of Buzz magazine, featuring actress Milla Jovovich)