Joe poised to Ripp into Time talent hunt

NEXT on the agenda for Time Inc. CEO Joe Ripp: The company is on the hunt to find a new group publisher/president for Time, Fortune, Money and possibly Sports Illustrated.

Currently, those titles report to Time Inc. executive vice president Evelyn Webster. She already had most of the monthly titles aimed at women under her wing but ended up getting the other four titles following the ouster of Todd Larsen, her counterpart who had been running most of the weeklies.

The news of the hunt comes only days after Richard Battista, the CEO of Mandalay Sports Media, a Hollywood production company seeking sportsrelated programming, was tapped by Ripp to be come president of the People and Entertainment Weekly Group.

That relieved Webster of one big headache, since People has been slipping in advertising and circulation but still generates close to 20 percent of Time Inc.’s revenue and half tits profits.

Webster has spoken about the advantage of having one team headed by publishers chasing ad sales while the group executives cook up new ideas to try and reignite the company.

All the while, Ripp is planning to centralize more and more of the ad operations in part to bring mass audiences to advertisers.

A spokesman for Time Inc. declined to comment on any search for another group president/publisher.

Dressed in red

Women’s Wear Daily, now owned by Jay Penske’s Penske Media, is gambling that it can convert the 105yearold publication, which is spilling red ink, from five days a week print coverage to daily digital coverage augmented by a glossy weekly print edition.

One source close to the situation said Penske Media plans to invest $5 million to $6 million a year over the next two to three years.

While Penske is spending up to $18 million at Fairchild, sources say, he will have no time or money to pursue buying Mort Zuckerman’s foundering Daily News, which recently hired bankers to pursue a possible sale.

The plan calls for Fairchild to claw back to profitability in the next two to three years.

Meanwhile, M, the men’s fashion lifestyle magazine that was brought back to life by the late Peter Kaplan — at the time he was serving as editorial director — is being converted into a trade title.

Next week, the first edition of that title, M Collections, debuts. Its aim is, not surprisingly, the men’s fashion trade.

Penske, shortly after his company bought Fairchild from Condé Nast Publications last August, confided to staffers that the company was losing close to $10 million a year under its old owner.

One source said that a lot of the loss came from the corporate overhead charges associated with being a part of the glitzy Condé empire.

Without that overhead, a source said the company’s annual losses were closer to $2 million a year on revenues of $60 million.

Media Ink reported back in January that Penske was mulling cutting back on WWD print. That is similar to the strategy he pursued after buying Variety and shuttering the five daily print editions in favor of roundtheclock digital coverage, a onceaweek print publication. plus more than a dozen special editions.

The final WWD print edition will be April 24. The first glossy weekly edition hits April 29.

“To be clear, this doesn’t mean we’re discarding daily journalism,” a note on Page 1 of WWD on Thursday read. “On the contrary, we’re doubling down with enhanced and invigorated WWD.com where you’ll see deeper editoriall content.”

The company said it is picking up new bureaus in China and Brazil this year to add to existing offices in Paris, Milan, London and Tokyo. The company previously ran ads saying it’s looking to hire up to 35 journalists.

It will also be sending a daily digital edition of curated content along with the weekly print edition to subscribers.

“In a media age where algorithms, aggregation and native content have reshaped and destroyed many news organizations, WWD’s core values and mission remain. Get the story first,” the note also said.

Insiders seem divided. One editorial source said, “It’s a good deal, just reformatting of the coverage.”

“It’s heartbreaking to a lot of the veterans,” says one source. “They’re newspaper people.”

Feed bag

The Food Innovation Group at Condé Nast Publications is unveiling what it claims is the first programmatic private marketplace for infeed native advertisers. The company merged its Bon Appétit site with its Epicurious site last year in a bid to build some critical mass on the digital front where it lags behind some larger rivals. It unveiled the new ad push on Tuesday and is said to already be hard at work for the first buy to be executed in this fashion with a big food company.

Programmatic is an automated way to buy media, and allows the advertiser to have more control over its ad campaigns, said Craig Kostelic, head of digital ad sales at the Food Innovation Group.