The Business of Magazines
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Bertrando3
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I keep saying this for a DECADE now 
Print magazines have no future or a very short lived one, mark my words. MANY people said, when digital magazines started to appear, that these would not last, that people would never stop buying print magazines and a decade later here we are:
- l'Uomo Vogue closed and reopened
- Some editions of Vogue closed and reopened
- MANY editions of cosmo and Elle closed
- Harper's Bazaar (one of the big 3 most sellable magazine brands in the world) closed their Australian and Chilean editions
- MANY men's fashion magazines closed this past two decades: US Men's Vogue, Vogue hommes japan, Men's Vogue China etc.
- MANY Asian magazines do not exist in print and only exist in their digital editions
etc.
It's a reality: as a society globally WE read much less newspapers and novels and books, and magazines nowadays aren't consumed as they were since the Gen Z watches images on Instagram but do not actually buy the print edition (therefore NO need to get influencers on covers instead of supermodels but that's another issue for another day...)
I rest my case your honor
Print magazines have no future or a very short lived one, mark my words. MANY people said, when digital magazines started to appear, that these would not last, that people would never stop buying print magazines and a decade later here we are: - l'Uomo Vogue closed and reopened
- Some editions of Vogue closed and reopened
- MANY editions of cosmo and Elle closed
- Harper's Bazaar (one of the big 3 most sellable magazine brands in the world) closed their Australian and Chilean editions
- MANY men's fashion magazines closed this past two decades: US Men's Vogue, Vogue hommes japan, Men's Vogue China etc.
- MANY Asian magazines do not exist in print and only exist in their digital editions
etc.
It's a reality: as a society globally WE read much less newspapers and novels and books, and magazines nowadays aren't consumed as they were since the Gen Z watches images on Instagram but do not actually buy the print edition (therefore NO need to get influencers on covers instead of supermodels but that's another issue for another day...)
I rest my case your honor
More on the Aussie closures today in the SMH, last para is very sad!
Hearst's search for new mag partner
The head honchos at Harper's Bazaar HQ in New York are not too happy with what has been happening to their beloved fashion bible in Australia. The magazine was unceremoniously killed off on Tuesday, four days after publisher Bauer Media was taken over by private equity firm Mercury Capital.
Bauer shut most of the international titles it publishes under licence here, including Elle, InStyle and Men's Health, but it was the axing of Harper's Bazaar - first launched in Australia in 1984 under the editorship of Lee Tulloch - which truly rattled the local magazine market.
The Harper's Bazaar masthead is owned by the wealthy American Hearst family and has been an icon of international glamour and style around the world for decades. For many years it was a joint venture between the Hearsts and former ACP proprietors the Packers. In 2017 it became a licensing agreement between Hearst and Bauer, which was due to expire at the end of the year.
Advertisement
PS can reveal the bad blood set in around two years ago when Harper's Bazaar Australia was firmly under the control of German-based Bauer, and the Americans were concerned it was not keeping up with global publishing trends, including the push towards digital media.
Hearst's global editorial director Kim St Clair Bodden discreetly flew to Sydney to meet with various publishing executives about forming a new alliance in Australia to publish the magazine. It remains to be seen if a new partner will emerge, but in other parts of the world Hearst has done similar transitions for its other titles, including Elle.
In the 1990s, when Harper's Bazaar was producing bumper issues of 300 or more pages in Australia packed with luxury advertising, the local edition was one of the most profitable in the world for the Hearsts and Packers.
While arch rival Edwina McCann at Vogue Australia is no doubt relishing all the extra ad revenue about to go her way, the loss of such a prestige brand from the market does not bode well for the overall luxury sector, which has boomed in Australia over the past decade.
Meanwhile there was nothing luxurious about how the 40 staff, including loyal Harper's Bazaar editor Eugenie Kelly, were shown the door at Bauer this week. As one put it to PS: "No speeches, no thanks, no cards ... not even a bloody cake. It really was very shabby treatment. People might think it's all Ab Fab, champers and glamour on those magazines, but in reality we worked out arses off, the days of $25,000 photo shoots are long gone. We pulled off miracles on a shoestring."
Source: https://www.smh.com.au/culture/cele...-celebrity-pecking-order-20200722-p55ecm.html
Hearst's search for new mag partner
The head honchos at Harper's Bazaar HQ in New York are not too happy with what has been happening to their beloved fashion bible in Australia. The magazine was unceremoniously killed off on Tuesday, four days after publisher Bauer Media was taken over by private equity firm Mercury Capital.
Bauer shut most of the international titles it publishes under licence here, including Elle, InStyle and Men's Health, but it was the axing of Harper's Bazaar - first launched in Australia in 1984 under the editorship of Lee Tulloch - which truly rattled the local magazine market.
The Harper's Bazaar masthead is owned by the wealthy American Hearst family and has been an icon of international glamour and style around the world for decades. For many years it was a joint venture between the Hearsts and former ACP proprietors the Packers. In 2017 it became a licensing agreement between Hearst and Bauer, which was due to expire at the end of the year.
Advertisement
PS can reveal the bad blood set in around two years ago when Harper's Bazaar Australia was firmly under the control of German-based Bauer, and the Americans were concerned it was not keeping up with global publishing trends, including the push towards digital media.
Hearst's global editorial director Kim St Clair Bodden discreetly flew to Sydney to meet with various publishing executives about forming a new alliance in Australia to publish the magazine. It remains to be seen if a new partner will emerge, but in other parts of the world Hearst has done similar transitions for its other titles, including Elle.
In the 1990s, when Harper's Bazaar was producing bumper issues of 300 or more pages in Australia packed with luxury advertising, the local edition was one of the most profitable in the world for the Hearsts and Packers.
While arch rival Edwina McCann at Vogue Australia is no doubt relishing all the extra ad revenue about to go her way, the loss of such a prestige brand from the market does not bode well for the overall luxury sector, which has boomed in Australia over the past decade.
Meanwhile there was nothing luxurious about how the 40 staff, including loyal Harper's Bazaar editor Eugenie Kelly, were shown the door at Bauer this week. As one put it to PS: "No speeches, no thanks, no cards ... not even a bloody cake. It really was very shabby treatment. People might think it's all Ab Fab, champers and glamour on those magazines, but in reality we worked out arses off, the days of $25,000 photo shoots are long gone. We pulled off miracles on a shoestring."
Source: https://www.smh.com.au/culture/cele...-celebrity-pecking-order-20200722-p55ecm.html
KoV
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On Amazon you can at times buy yearly subscriptions (Print + Digital) to Vogue, GQ, HB, Elle, and many others for often $10 or less for a year. It’s been that way for a couple years now. Allure and Women’s Health are on sale right now for $.99(!!!) for a 4-month subscription, Esquire and Men’s Health are $6 for a year.
Benn98
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Somewhere there's a huge disconnect if prices are this low and people still aren't people buying??
I've had free subscriptions to GQ, Vogue, Allure, HB, Elle, Cosmo, W, Rolling Stone, New Yorker, and many others for the last 6-7 years.
That's why subscriber numbers can be misleading; they don't take into account free/cheap subscriptions. The US Postal Service requires magazines to print an audit in year-end issues. It's interesting to note what % of overall subscribers are free or nominal $.
Phuel
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Maybe people are just finally tired of seeing Oprah on the cover of every single issue for decades. And I don’t mean that in a dismissive manner to her. It’s a stunning revelation and testament to the power of her personality and brand that she’s lasted as long as she had with such a concept; one that would have been ridiculed as pure vanity and bound for failure from anyone else.
And as for Vogue Scandinavia, Vogue is really not representative of affluence for many countries. The ME for instance— from Saudi Arabia to UAE may be fairly generalized as one of the most long-standing, powerful consumers of luxury brands, yet it wasn’t until recently that there was a Vogue Arabia (and they could easily have had a Vogue for each ME country/region). ME readers/consumers had/have access to any Vogue— and any of the brands advertised within the Vogues that they want, yet they’ve never had this insecure attitude that Western countries (America in particular) have of needing representation for validation. Perhaps that’s how Scandinavians feel (until now)— or some rwealthy Scandinavian’s finally decided to invest in a franchise that’ll get him in on some fashionable parties.
Rather buy a pack of smokes.
And as for Vogue Scandinavia, Vogue is really not representative of affluence for many countries. The ME for instance— from Saudi Arabia to UAE may be fairly generalized as one of the most long-standing, powerful consumers of luxury brands, yet it wasn’t until recently that there was a Vogue Arabia (and they could easily have had a Vogue for each ME country/region). ME readers/consumers had/have access to any Vogue— and any of the brands advertised within the Vogues that they want, yet they’ve never had this insecure attitude that Western countries (America in particular) have of needing representation for validation. Perhaps that’s how Scandinavians feel (until now)— or some rwealthy Scandinavian’s finally decided to invest in a franchise that’ll get him in on some fashionable parties.
Rather buy a pack of smokes.
Benn98
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LOL. I don't smoke, #thankyouverymuch
MissMagAddict
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At Hearst Magazines, Print Continues to Shrink
O, The Oprah Magazine’s regular print run is ending, but many of the publisher’s titles were already quietly reducing frequency.
In a companywide note Monday, Kristen O’Hara, chief business officer of Hearst Magazines, confirmed reports that O, The Oprah Magazine, a 20-year-long collaboration between Hearst Magazines and Oprah Winfrey, would be scrapping its regular print run from next year and focusing more on digital. There will still be print in some form, but how that will work is yet to be revealed.
“As we celebrate 20 years of O, The Oprah Magazine, we’re thinking about what’s next, but the partnership and the brand are not going away,” she said.
The decision to evolve the brand away from a monthly print magazine is understood to have been made by Winfrey, tired of posing for every cover (sometimes alongside a guest star like editor at large Gayle King) and increasingly busy with other projects, such as a just-unveiled interview series with Apple. Winfrey has publicly discussed several times, including in a 2015 interview with WWD, her desire to eventually stop appearing on the cover.
But regardless of whose decision it was to significantly reduce the magazine’s print issues, the move adds to a backdrop of shrinking print at the publisher of titles including Harper’s Bazaar, Good Housekeeping and Women’s Health.
Like many other publishers, Hearst has been quietly reducing the print frequency of some of its major titles over the past few years, but in recent months, this trend has been exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic triggering a plunge in advertising.
Take Marie Claire. At the beginning of the year before there were any confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the U.S., the plan was to just combine December and January, as it had done in 2019. By spring the decision was made to combine June, July and August into one summer issue. Now, a Hearst spokeswoman confirmed, there will also be combined fall and winter issues this year. That means there will just be seven issues this year, compared to 11 in 2019. It’s thought a summer issue will be permanent, but there’s no word on if the fall and winter editions will be regular.
Instead, Aya Kanai, editor in chief of Marie Claire, recently told WWD the magazine is gearing up for a digital push, with the launch of its inaugural digital issue.
“Starting in August through the end of the year, I’m adding three digital covers and digital issues on top of our print issues. So basically I’m taking the cadence to one digital issue, one print issue, one digital issue, one print issue, one digital issue at the end of the year to make sure that Marie Claire is out there as much as possible. So we’re shooting exclusive digital covers,” she said.
It’s a similar trend across many Hearst titles. Elle magazine, the company’s biggest fashion title, will publish 10 issues this year instead of 12 as in 2019. Cosmopolitan, meanwhile, will release 10, versus 12 in 2019. Harper’s Bazaar is at nine, compared to 10 last year.
Elsewhere at Hearst, Esquire earlier this year shrank from eight to six issues a year. (It was at 10 at the start of 2019.) Good Housekeeping began combining January and February and July and August this year, pushing its frequency down from 12 to 10.
And while print frequency has been shrinking, Hearst has been looking to monetize digital more though membership programs and metered paywalls, with advertising remaining volatile. In recent months these have been rolled out at Cosmopolitan, Women’s Health, Good Housekeeping, Popular Mechanics and Men’s Health. Runner’s World has had one since 2019, while Esquire introduced a so-called micro membership centered around the work of politics writer Charles P. Pierce in November 2018.
As for O, The Oprah Magazine, there’s no word yet if a subscription model is in the cards for its digital component — Oprahmag.com, which Hearst claims reaches an audience of 8 million.
“We will continue to invest in the growth of the brand as it becomes more digitally centric, while connecting to our devoted audience of more than 15.6 million in print,” O’Hara further explained in her staff memo. She also made the point that there will be a print expression and they are evaluating what that will look like beyond the December 2020 issue. This could be quarterly or special issues.
Whether Hearst continues to reduce print frequency for many of its titles will largely depend on who is chosen as the successor to former president Troy Young. As reported, the executive, who made a big digital push, including replacing many editor in chiefs with digital heads, resigned Thursday after The New York Times published an investigation into his alleged lewd behavior and comments. Debi Chirichella, executive vice president, chief financial officer and director of global operations for Hearst Magazines, has taken the reins in the interim.
For now, though, despite its decline, print brings in more ad revenue than digital and Young’s successor will need to tread carefully as they consider the role of print in Hearst’s future.
source | wwd
O, The Oprah Magazine’s regular print run is ending, but many of the publisher’s titles were already quietly reducing frequency.
In a companywide note Monday, Kristen O’Hara, chief business officer of Hearst Magazines, confirmed reports that O, The Oprah Magazine, a 20-year-long collaboration between Hearst Magazines and Oprah Winfrey, would be scrapping its regular print run from next year and focusing more on digital. There will still be print in some form, but how that will work is yet to be revealed.
“As we celebrate 20 years of O, The Oprah Magazine, we’re thinking about what’s next, but the partnership and the brand are not going away,” she said.
The decision to evolve the brand away from a monthly print magazine is understood to have been made by Winfrey, tired of posing for every cover (sometimes alongside a guest star like editor at large Gayle King) and increasingly busy with other projects, such as a just-unveiled interview series with Apple. Winfrey has publicly discussed several times, including in a 2015 interview with WWD, her desire to eventually stop appearing on the cover.
But regardless of whose decision it was to significantly reduce the magazine’s print issues, the move adds to a backdrop of shrinking print at the publisher of titles including Harper’s Bazaar, Good Housekeeping and Women’s Health.
Like many other publishers, Hearst has been quietly reducing the print frequency of some of its major titles over the past few years, but in recent months, this trend has been exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic triggering a plunge in advertising.
Take Marie Claire. At the beginning of the year before there were any confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the U.S., the plan was to just combine December and January, as it had done in 2019. By spring the decision was made to combine June, July and August into one summer issue. Now, a Hearst spokeswoman confirmed, there will also be combined fall and winter issues this year. That means there will just be seven issues this year, compared to 11 in 2019. It’s thought a summer issue will be permanent, but there’s no word on if the fall and winter editions will be regular.
Instead, Aya Kanai, editor in chief of Marie Claire, recently told WWD the magazine is gearing up for a digital push, with the launch of its inaugural digital issue.
“Starting in August through the end of the year, I’m adding three digital covers and digital issues on top of our print issues. So basically I’m taking the cadence to one digital issue, one print issue, one digital issue, one print issue, one digital issue at the end of the year to make sure that Marie Claire is out there as much as possible. So we’re shooting exclusive digital covers,” she said.
It’s a similar trend across many Hearst titles. Elle magazine, the company’s biggest fashion title, will publish 10 issues this year instead of 12 as in 2019. Cosmopolitan, meanwhile, will release 10, versus 12 in 2019. Harper’s Bazaar is at nine, compared to 10 last year.
Elsewhere at Hearst, Esquire earlier this year shrank from eight to six issues a year. (It was at 10 at the start of 2019.) Good Housekeeping began combining January and February and July and August this year, pushing its frequency down from 12 to 10.
And while print frequency has been shrinking, Hearst has been looking to monetize digital more though membership programs and metered paywalls, with advertising remaining volatile. In recent months these have been rolled out at Cosmopolitan, Women’s Health, Good Housekeeping, Popular Mechanics and Men’s Health. Runner’s World has had one since 2019, while Esquire introduced a so-called micro membership centered around the work of politics writer Charles P. Pierce in November 2018.
As for O, The Oprah Magazine, there’s no word yet if a subscription model is in the cards for its digital component — Oprahmag.com, which Hearst claims reaches an audience of 8 million.
“We will continue to invest in the growth of the brand as it becomes more digitally centric, while connecting to our devoted audience of more than 15.6 million in print,” O’Hara further explained in her staff memo. She also made the point that there will be a print expression and they are evaluating what that will look like beyond the December 2020 issue. This could be quarterly or special issues.
Whether Hearst continues to reduce print frequency for many of its titles will largely depend on who is chosen as the successor to former president Troy Young. As reported, the executive, who made a big digital push, including replacing many editor in chiefs with digital heads, resigned Thursday after The New York Times published an investigation into his alleged lewd behavior and comments. Debi Chirichella, executive vice president, chief financial officer and director of global operations for Hearst Magazines, has taken the reins in the interim.
For now, though, despite its decline, print brings in more ad revenue than digital and Young’s successor will need to tread carefully as they consider the role of print in Hearst’s future.
source | wwd
Can't imagine many people paying to get past a paywall on fashion magazine websites
avonlea002
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Me neither. The best thing they can do is stop posting magazine contents on social media. There is no point in paying full price for a physical copy when the majority of it has been already published online. I miss waiting for a new issue to arrive on newsstand and having no idea what to expect. It gave me such excitement.
MON
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I think because people didn't know it exists. Look at us for example, we're one of the few who supports print and yet had 0 idea of this $12 offer.
Let's be honest, who goes to Amazon to search for Vogue? To the average American, Vogue is accessible in any drugstore there is, so why on earth will they search that in Amazon?
What magazines should do is to branch out their advertisements beyond their own websites/related websites. Vogue relies heavily on "social media influencers" for sales, but refuse to utilize the medium itself. They should seriously start investing on ads that will appear on Instagram/YouTube/Facebook ++ That will expand the reach of that $12 offer. Heck, make a damn TikTok about it! Even TikTok now has ads!
GivenchyAddict
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Bertrando3
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crazy to think about these numbers, wow...
Srdjan
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So clearly, Marie Claire is the next one to go. As expected.
My personal prediction is that in, a digital-oriented and crisis-hit world there will be no place for magazines like Marie Claire, Cosmo, Glamour etc. Each country/market will have its respective Vogue, Bazaar and/or Elle as they are the ones serious regular advertisers go to (and can offer exclusive fashion content, while everything you read in Cosmo is already online somewhere) and it will suffice. Of course, East-Asian market will probably suffer minimally.
My personal prediction is that in, a digital-oriented and crisis-hit world there will be no place for magazines like Marie Claire, Cosmo, Glamour etc. Each country/market will have its respective Vogue, Bazaar and/or Elle as they are the ones serious regular advertisers go to (and can offer exclusive fashion content, while everything you read in Cosmo is already online somewhere) and it will suffice. Of course, East-Asian market will probably suffer minimally.
Xone
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Hey guys...question...anyone know how exactly works a franchise in the magazine world? It could for a commercial or independent magazine....any useful info would be appreciate it. I have a little idea about it, specially in the money part, contents, duties, etc...
PowerDroid
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PowerDroid
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I have just switched all of my subscriptions to Amazon, so that I can have them all on one page. For me it's easier to manage this way. From The Watercolor Artist to Vogue, I can cancel anytime, check my balances, send feedback, complaints, all on one website. It's kinda convenient.
MissMagAddict
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After Troy Young’s Flameout, Can Hearst Untangle Its Management “Morass”?
The employee union is ascendant at the magazine publisher behind Esquire and Cosmo—and the search is on for a new president. David Carey? Not again. Kate Lewis? Not Likely. Debi Chirichella? Well, maybe.
In the wake of Troy Young’s defenestration after two years as president of Hearst Magazines, where a New York Times investigation found that he fostered a “toxic” workplace environment, and had been making wildly inappropriate sexual remarks to employees, the division is awash in questions about its future—and how it ended up in this crisis in the first place.
For starters, there’s the matter of who will ultimately be crowned as Young’s successor, overseeing a portfolio that includes such premium brands as Esquire, Cosmopolitan, Harper’s Bazaar, Town & Country, and numerous others. One name you can cross off the list right away is Young’s predecessor, David Carey, who returned to the company in January (after a yearlong fellowship at Harvard’s Advanced Leadership Initiative), in the position of senior vice president of public affairs and communications. Carey is a magazine heavyweight who was highly respected during his eight years running the division, known for gestures like sending every employee a handwritten note on their birthday. A Hearst insider told me, “There’s some degree of wishful thinking that David Carey will swoop in and rescue everyone from this morass.”
But sources said a big part of what lured Carey back to the company was the promise of getting to work on philanthropic initiatives via the Hearst Foundation. In recent days, he has assured inquisitive colleagues that he is happily focused on his new role. (He also gave away most of his expensive Gucci suits after stepping down as president in 2018, confident that he wouldn’t again require the wardrobe of a high-flying company president.) As one of my sources put it, “I think David is pretty happy on the 27th floor looking over far less messy concerns.” (Carey was away on vacation this week and therefore unavailable for a chat. This is also a good place to mention that Carey previously served as group president at Vanity Fair’s parent company, Condé Nast, which competes directly with Hearst.)
In the interim, at least, Debi Chirichella, previously the magazine division’s chief financial officer, has been named acting president. Given her background in financial planning as opposed to sales or content, some editorial employees were left with the impression that “she’s very much temporary,” as one of them put it. But others familiar with the inner workings of the company sounded more confident that she may eventually shed the “acting” part of the title. One source told me that those on the business and operations side, in particular, are “thrilled” to see her in the role. Another pointed out that her number-crunching background is precisely what is needed right now, because the magazine division, faced with the same revenue troubles as the rest of the industry, “is a financial puzzle at this point. Debbie will probably get ratified into the job.” (Someone familiar with the plans told me there’s “no timetable to start any formal search for the role.”)
In an email to employees this week, Chirichella said she was determined to “lead the change that must occur and to help rebuild trust within our organization.” She addressed the allegations about Young that surfaced in the Times piece. (Sample: In the Hearst cafeteria, he reportedly approached a heavily pregnant employee and said, “So, is the baby mine?”) And she offered assurances “that no one in leadership, including myself or anyone at the corporate level, knew about these grotesque allegations.”
There’s a lot of skepticism regarding that claim, given how widespread the hand-wringing about Young was within the organization. (The company maintains that the only complaints it officially received had to do with Young’s management style, not his gross remarks.) Moreover, despite being well-liked and generally seen as a smart and competent manager, Chirichella probably didn’t score any points among the journalistic ranks for the part of her note that touched on the Bryan Singer fiasco, in which a 2018 Esquire investigation into sexual-misconduct allegations against the director was controversially killed by the brass, only to be published to much acclaim by The Atlantic. “Hearst has a long history of doing investigative journalism,” Chirichella wrote. “We never shy away from reporting important stories of the day. I remain committed to that. However, we will not publish material that is unfair and unsubstantiated.” The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, took a sledgehammer to that assessment. “Just appalling,” he tweeted. “After Hearst executives spiked the Singer investigation, @TheAtlantic took it on -- edited it, fact-checked it again, and published. Not a single fact in the piece has ever been challenged.”
I was told that Hearst’s lawyers “weighed in very heavily” on the Singer piece, but its fate ultimately came down to chief content officer Kate Lewis, a former managing editor and human resources executive (at Condé Nast) who emerged as Young’s right-hand woman in his mission to turn Hearst into a digital success story—“Boris and Natasha” is how one source described their dynamic. In the Times, Ben Smith reported that before spiking the Singer story, Lewis “expressed doubt that the sources would stand up to scrutiny.” Additionally, according to Smith, “Lewis, who had little experience with investigative journalism, offered suggestions that struck the reporters as unhelpful. She told them the story could use a sympathetic victim, like Gwyneth Paltrow, the writers said. She also suggested serializing the story online, or publishing it as a kind of blind item.”
Between those details and her proximity to Young, Lewis’s fate within the company is now seen as up in the air, at least among many within the editorial corps. “Kate Lewis is done,” one source sneered. Another said, “She’s a dead woman walking.” People more sympathetic to Lewis suggested that she still has support. One described hearing from “a number of people this week” who feel the criticism of her is sexist and “terribly unfair.” A Hearst spokesperson defended her: “With more than 25 years in print and digital publishing, Kate is a very talented editorial leader with a strong staff, who encourages collaboration across departments and platforms.”
Lewis and Young both reportedly took a “hard line” against the rank and file’s union drive, which was effectively a reaction to their regime. In that sense, Wednesday’s result was a telling backdrop to the recent corporate upheaval: a tally of mail-in ballots confirmed that eligible employees had voted to unionize by a margin of three to one. “Today is a collective victory for every single person who’s supported this fight for a more transparent, diverse, and fair workplace,” the organizing committee declared in an email.
Perhaps the biggest question of all is how Young ended up as president if he was so problematic. Originally brought in by Carey seven years ago to run the digital operation, following two years as president of Say Media, Young immediately established himself as a sort of hard-charging disruptor, creating something of a schism between print and digital. “Troy also attracted strong digital managers who otherwise would never come to a traditional media company,” a source said in his defense. “And, ironically, the profits generated from digital kept hundreds of print editors employed.” Nonetheless, “bully” is a word that consistently came up in my conversations about him. In addition to clashing with high-profile editors like Joanna Coles and Jay Fielden, sources said he also rubbed many people the wrong way on the business side, where sales folks and publishers found him to be dismissive and disrespectful. People I spoke with described tense meetings in which Young raised the temperature and belittled publishing director Michael Clinton (who retired last year after 21 years with the company). “Why didn’t they hire him” as president, one of them said of Clinton. “He’s a rainmaker.”
When I reached Young on Thursday, he said, “I have tremendous admiration and respect for Michael Clinton and the people in our publishing organization. I was hired to push the company forward at an intensely difficult time in media history and did so for eight years. There were some tough conversations and many, many inspirational and supportive ones.”
My sources likewise corroborated the general contours of the Times investigation. (Other samples: “Mr. Young also emailed p*rn*gr*phy to a high-level Hearst editor”; “Mr. Young had told her that she should have inserted her fingers into herself and asked her date if he liked her smell.”) As someone who has interacted with Young a fair amount put it, “His mastery was to constantly make people feel uncomfortable and weirded out.” In a statement to the Times a day before he tendered his resignation, Young said, “Specific allegations raised by my detractors are either untrue, greatly exaggerated or taken out of context. The pace of evolving our business and the strength of my commitment is ambitious, and I sincerely regret the toll it has taken on some in our organization.”
People familiar with Young’s appointment said there wasn’t unanimous support for him at the highest rungs of the corporate ladder. They said executive vice chairman and former CEO Frank Bennack Jr. had reservations, and one source told me the board had mixed feelings about whether Young was the right choice. (Someone with knowledge of the board’s thinking said its directors agreed that Young, faced with double-digit revenue declines, had a fraught job ahead of him, and that anyone in his position was going to have to make difficult and unpopular decisions.) Current CEO Steven Swartz, however, believed that Young was best person to lead the division into the digital future.
Before making it official, one of Swartz’s deputies, Lincoln Millstein, did a “listening tour,” as it was described to me, to gather feedback about Young. Millstein told the Times he informed Swartz that Young had “overwhelming support.” But someone familiar with the listening tour disputed that, telling me Millstein acknowledged during the meetings that he was aware of how thoroughly divisive Young was, not the stuff of leadership material, he said. Yet another person familiar with the meetings countered, “Lincoln did canvas the org, really looking for #MeToo-type complaints. Nothing more came back than Troy being a real jerk at times. And while some thought Troy divisive, there were many others who viewed Troy as a smart operator, albeit with rough edges that needed to be improved.”
Whatever the case, Swartz was sold on Young. During Young’s inauguration toast in July of 2018 on the 44th floor of the Hearst Tower, according to someone who was there, Swartz told a few dozen executives and high-level employees that Young had turned Hearst into “a world-class and profitable digital business.” At the same gathering, Bennack said, “One of my favorite sayings about leadership is, you get there on ability but you stay there with character,” which some attendees interpreted as a veiled attempt to reassure the crowd that Young would be “put on a short leash.”
Palace intrigue aside, ultimately, “the most important thing is for people to feel like they’re in a safe environment,” said one of my sources, “like they’re going to be supported and treated with respect and compassion.” It now falls to Chirichella to commence the reset. “The company has always insisted on the highest level of respect for each other,” she wrote in her email this week, “which I am committed to ensuring is carried out at every level of our organization.” Those ever-multiplying corporate training seminars on topics like “Workplace Enlightenment” and “Bystander Intervention” will now feel all the more urgent. Among the bullet points that will be covered in the next one: How to “address unsavory behaviors.”
source | vanityfair
The employee union is ascendant at the magazine publisher behind Esquire and Cosmo—and the search is on for a new president. David Carey? Not again. Kate Lewis? Not Likely. Debi Chirichella? Well, maybe.
In the wake of Troy Young’s defenestration after two years as president of Hearst Magazines, where a New York Times investigation found that he fostered a “toxic” workplace environment, and had been making wildly inappropriate sexual remarks to employees, the division is awash in questions about its future—and how it ended up in this crisis in the first place.
For starters, there’s the matter of who will ultimately be crowned as Young’s successor, overseeing a portfolio that includes such premium brands as Esquire, Cosmopolitan, Harper’s Bazaar, Town & Country, and numerous others. One name you can cross off the list right away is Young’s predecessor, David Carey, who returned to the company in January (after a yearlong fellowship at Harvard’s Advanced Leadership Initiative), in the position of senior vice president of public affairs and communications. Carey is a magazine heavyweight who was highly respected during his eight years running the division, known for gestures like sending every employee a handwritten note on their birthday. A Hearst insider told me, “There’s some degree of wishful thinking that David Carey will swoop in and rescue everyone from this morass.”
But sources said a big part of what lured Carey back to the company was the promise of getting to work on philanthropic initiatives via the Hearst Foundation. In recent days, he has assured inquisitive colleagues that he is happily focused on his new role. (He also gave away most of his expensive Gucci suits after stepping down as president in 2018, confident that he wouldn’t again require the wardrobe of a high-flying company president.) As one of my sources put it, “I think David is pretty happy on the 27th floor looking over far less messy concerns.” (Carey was away on vacation this week and therefore unavailable for a chat. This is also a good place to mention that Carey previously served as group president at Vanity Fair’s parent company, Condé Nast, which competes directly with Hearst.)
In the interim, at least, Debi Chirichella, previously the magazine division’s chief financial officer, has been named acting president. Given her background in financial planning as opposed to sales or content, some editorial employees were left with the impression that “she’s very much temporary,” as one of them put it. But others familiar with the inner workings of the company sounded more confident that she may eventually shed the “acting” part of the title. One source told me that those on the business and operations side, in particular, are “thrilled” to see her in the role. Another pointed out that her number-crunching background is precisely what is needed right now, because the magazine division, faced with the same revenue troubles as the rest of the industry, “is a financial puzzle at this point. Debbie will probably get ratified into the job.” (Someone familiar with the plans told me there’s “no timetable to start any formal search for the role.”)
In an email to employees this week, Chirichella said she was determined to “lead the change that must occur and to help rebuild trust within our organization.” She addressed the allegations about Young that surfaced in the Times piece. (Sample: In the Hearst cafeteria, he reportedly approached a heavily pregnant employee and said, “So, is the baby mine?”) And she offered assurances “that no one in leadership, including myself or anyone at the corporate level, knew about these grotesque allegations.”
There’s a lot of skepticism regarding that claim, given how widespread the hand-wringing about Young was within the organization. (The company maintains that the only complaints it officially received had to do with Young’s management style, not his gross remarks.) Moreover, despite being well-liked and generally seen as a smart and competent manager, Chirichella probably didn’t score any points among the journalistic ranks for the part of her note that touched on the Bryan Singer fiasco, in which a 2018 Esquire investigation into sexual-misconduct allegations against the director was controversially killed by the brass, only to be published to much acclaim by The Atlantic. “Hearst has a long history of doing investigative journalism,” Chirichella wrote. “We never shy away from reporting important stories of the day. I remain committed to that. However, we will not publish material that is unfair and unsubstantiated.” The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, took a sledgehammer to that assessment. “Just appalling,” he tweeted. “After Hearst executives spiked the Singer investigation, @TheAtlantic took it on -- edited it, fact-checked it again, and published. Not a single fact in the piece has ever been challenged.”
I was told that Hearst’s lawyers “weighed in very heavily” on the Singer piece, but its fate ultimately came down to chief content officer Kate Lewis, a former managing editor and human resources executive (at Condé Nast) who emerged as Young’s right-hand woman in his mission to turn Hearst into a digital success story—“Boris and Natasha” is how one source described their dynamic. In the Times, Ben Smith reported that before spiking the Singer story, Lewis “expressed doubt that the sources would stand up to scrutiny.” Additionally, according to Smith, “Lewis, who had little experience with investigative journalism, offered suggestions that struck the reporters as unhelpful. She told them the story could use a sympathetic victim, like Gwyneth Paltrow, the writers said. She also suggested serializing the story online, or publishing it as a kind of blind item.”
Between those details and her proximity to Young, Lewis’s fate within the company is now seen as up in the air, at least among many within the editorial corps. “Kate Lewis is done,” one source sneered. Another said, “She’s a dead woman walking.” People more sympathetic to Lewis suggested that she still has support. One described hearing from “a number of people this week” who feel the criticism of her is sexist and “terribly unfair.” A Hearst spokesperson defended her: “With more than 25 years in print and digital publishing, Kate is a very talented editorial leader with a strong staff, who encourages collaboration across departments and platforms.”
Lewis and Young both reportedly took a “hard line” against the rank and file’s union drive, which was effectively a reaction to their regime. In that sense, Wednesday’s result was a telling backdrop to the recent corporate upheaval: a tally of mail-in ballots confirmed that eligible employees had voted to unionize by a margin of three to one. “Today is a collective victory for every single person who’s supported this fight for a more transparent, diverse, and fair workplace,” the organizing committee declared in an email.
Perhaps the biggest question of all is how Young ended up as president if he was so problematic. Originally brought in by Carey seven years ago to run the digital operation, following two years as president of Say Media, Young immediately established himself as a sort of hard-charging disruptor, creating something of a schism between print and digital. “Troy also attracted strong digital managers who otherwise would never come to a traditional media company,” a source said in his defense. “And, ironically, the profits generated from digital kept hundreds of print editors employed.” Nonetheless, “bully” is a word that consistently came up in my conversations about him. In addition to clashing with high-profile editors like Joanna Coles and Jay Fielden, sources said he also rubbed many people the wrong way on the business side, where sales folks and publishers found him to be dismissive and disrespectful. People I spoke with described tense meetings in which Young raised the temperature and belittled publishing director Michael Clinton (who retired last year after 21 years with the company). “Why didn’t they hire him” as president, one of them said of Clinton. “He’s a rainmaker.”
When I reached Young on Thursday, he said, “I have tremendous admiration and respect for Michael Clinton and the people in our publishing organization. I was hired to push the company forward at an intensely difficult time in media history and did so for eight years. There were some tough conversations and many, many inspirational and supportive ones.”
My sources likewise corroborated the general contours of the Times investigation. (Other samples: “Mr. Young also emailed p*rn*gr*phy to a high-level Hearst editor”; “Mr. Young had told her that she should have inserted her fingers into herself and asked her date if he liked her smell.”) As someone who has interacted with Young a fair amount put it, “His mastery was to constantly make people feel uncomfortable and weirded out.” In a statement to the Times a day before he tendered his resignation, Young said, “Specific allegations raised by my detractors are either untrue, greatly exaggerated or taken out of context. The pace of evolving our business and the strength of my commitment is ambitious, and I sincerely regret the toll it has taken on some in our organization.”
People familiar with Young’s appointment said there wasn’t unanimous support for him at the highest rungs of the corporate ladder. They said executive vice chairman and former CEO Frank Bennack Jr. had reservations, and one source told me the board had mixed feelings about whether Young was the right choice. (Someone with knowledge of the board’s thinking said its directors agreed that Young, faced with double-digit revenue declines, had a fraught job ahead of him, and that anyone in his position was going to have to make difficult and unpopular decisions.) Current CEO Steven Swartz, however, believed that Young was best person to lead the division into the digital future.
Before making it official, one of Swartz’s deputies, Lincoln Millstein, did a “listening tour,” as it was described to me, to gather feedback about Young. Millstein told the Times he informed Swartz that Young had “overwhelming support.” But someone familiar with the listening tour disputed that, telling me Millstein acknowledged during the meetings that he was aware of how thoroughly divisive Young was, not the stuff of leadership material, he said. Yet another person familiar with the meetings countered, “Lincoln did canvas the org, really looking for #MeToo-type complaints. Nothing more came back than Troy being a real jerk at times. And while some thought Troy divisive, there were many others who viewed Troy as a smart operator, albeit with rough edges that needed to be improved.”
Whatever the case, Swartz was sold on Young. During Young’s inauguration toast in July of 2018 on the 44th floor of the Hearst Tower, according to someone who was there, Swartz told a few dozen executives and high-level employees that Young had turned Hearst into “a world-class and profitable digital business.” At the same gathering, Bennack said, “One of my favorite sayings about leadership is, you get there on ability but you stay there with character,” which some attendees interpreted as a veiled attempt to reassure the crowd that Young would be “put on a short leash.”
Palace intrigue aside, ultimately, “the most important thing is for people to feel like they’re in a safe environment,” said one of my sources, “like they’re going to be supported and treated with respect and compassion.” It now falls to Chirichella to commence the reset. “The company has always insisted on the highest level of respect for each other,” she wrote in her email this week, “which I am committed to ensuring is carried out at every level of our organization.” Those ever-multiplying corporate training seminars on topics like “Workplace Enlightenment” and “Bystander Intervention” will now feel all the more urgent. Among the bullet points that will be covered in the next one: How to “address unsavory behaviors.”
source | vanityfair
