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Jan 12 2009 10:22AM EST

Hearst Re-ups Black: A Sign of the Times?

For the past few weeks, rumors have been circulating that Hearst Magazines president Cathie Black was on her way out. A report in the New York Post suggested that various Hearst higher-ups had lost patience with Black, whether because she was seen as clueless about the internet or because she was shameless about hawking her memoir. More recently, there's been (thoroughly unsubstantiated) gossip to the effect that Hearst was sounding out potential successors.

Well, you can forget all that. The selfsame Post reports today that Black is getting another three-year term -- and this even though, at 64, she's ripe for retirement and has already passed the usual valedictory milestones (the memoir, the lifetime achievement award). My question: What does it mean?

The news that Black's sticking around reminds me of what happened at Time Inc., where the conventional wisdom was that CEO Ann Moore would retire in 2010 -- until suddenly it wasn't. Moore's salvation apparently lay in her division's relatively strong 2007 performance and a widespread sense that Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes had bigger things to worry about.

Like her Time Inc. counterpart, Black has a pretty dismal record of launching new magazines: Virtually everything she's started -- with the notable exception of O, The Oprah Magazine -- had to be shut down in short order. And, as the Post notes, Hearst is even further behind than Time Inc. at translating its print revenues into digital dollars.

So why the reprieve(s)? Could it be that, as Simon Dumenco suggested, the big media conglomerates no longer believe there's a future in magazine publishing -- in which case, why bother trying to find next-generation leadership? Or have they just accepted that, given the state of the media business, mediocrity is the best that can reasonably be hoped for?

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