Ripp kills publishers
Round 3 of Time shuffles
In his third round of restructuring in five days, Time Inc. Chief Executive Joe Ripp confirmed earlier rumors by eliminating the title of publisher from the 94-year-old company.
The publishing boss also rearranged Time’s sales operations into seven major product categories.
Some of the categories will be staffed by ex-publishers, the company said.
Other publishers were reassigned as broad-based “brand” leaders with multiple titles now under their umbrellas.
A few were assigned to digital and native advertising.
The move is seen as a dramatic gamble that a legacy media company built on strong magazine brands — like People, Sports Illustrated, Time and InStyle — can capture lost ad dollars by selling broad multititle packages to big advertisers, whether they be carmakers, tech firms, fashion houses, pharma outfits, big-box retailers or packaged-goods sellers.
In reality, most major publishers in the past decade have increasingly relied on central corporate sales departments to sell the biggest advertisers across many titles.
No other print-based publisher, though, has taken the dramatic step of eliminating the publisher title entirely.
“This new structure will allow us to better serve our advertising partners and deliver on the promise of being a one-stop shop and solutionsbased platform for advertis- ers and agencies,” said Global Ad Sales Director Mark Ford, who unveiled the changes in a memo to staffers on Wednesday.
The aim is to combat digital media companies such as BuzzFeed, Vice and Vox — each of which has experienced double-digit ad-sales gains in recent years.
Print, meanwhile, has struggled.
The changes have stirred new fears inside the company that job cuts will soon follow.
One insider said he expected there to be several hundred job cuts in the days ahead.
The company was not commenting on that rumor, which has been gathering steam in Time Inc. office corridors in recent days.
Wednesday’s changes include People/Entertainment Weekly Group Publisher Karen Kovacs being named president of the Food & Beverage category, a new group.