Time Inc. Names Matters New 'Money' M.E.

Money, which laid off its managing editor, Eric Schurenberg, yesterday, has named a successor. As WWD predicted, the job is going to Craig Matters, a Money veteran who's been serving as executive editor of sister title Fortune since May.

For what it's worth, I'm told part of the reason for releasing Schurenberg was a feeling on the part of the business side that he had allowed the magazine to become "too downscale," making it more difficult to attract high-end advertisers. Year to date through September, Money carried 540 ad pages, a 1.1 percent increase over 2007.

Here's the release from Time inc. editor in chief John Huey.

To: Time Inc. Employees

From: John Huey

Re: Staff Announcement

I am pleased to announce the appointment of Craig Matters as managing editor of Money. Craig, who was most recently executive editor at Fortune, is no stranger to Money, previously holding several positions with the title including executive editor.

As Fortune's executive editor he headed up Fortune.com and helped to oversee technology and investing coverage. He has worked closely with Fortune writers to increase the title's technology and investing coverage both in print and online at Fortune.com and CNNMoney.com.

Craig is a veteran of every title in the old Fortune|Money group. He originally joined Time Inc. as a senior editor at Money, later named assistant managing editor, where he primarily worked on investing coverage and feature editing. He left in 2001 and headed out for the web, serving as the first editor of the incredibly successful CNNMoney.com, which at that time was a combination of CNNfn.com and Money.com. The site re-launched in 2006 to include all Time Inc. business and financial titles, and in October, under executive editor/VP Chris Peacock, received 39.5 million unique visitors and 37 million video streams based on internal Omniture data. In 2004 Craig rejoined Money as executive editor.

Previous to his time at Time Inc., Craig spent ten years at American Lawyer Media, where he was editor of an early online community for lawyers called Counsel Connect and ran newsrooms for American Lawyer in San Francisco and Miami. He began his career as a reporter and editor at weekly and daily newspapers in Connecticut.

Craig knows personal finance and investing. He knows the web. He knows Money Magazine, its audience and all the edit players. He is a change agent and an aggressive, entrepreneurial editor. Money is already a leader against the competition, consistently delivering more subscribers and newsstand buyers than Kiplinger's and Smart Money combined. Craig is a natural choice to build on that success, increase web cooperation and lead Money into the future.<,/p>

Originally from Philadelphia, Craig is a graduate of Vassar College. He lives in Maplewood, NJ with his wife Sara and two teenage children.

Please join me in welcoming Craig back to Money and congratulating him on his new position.

J.H.