O’Dair tapped to be the cure for Prevention

By KEITH J. KELLY

R ODALE

named Barbara O’Dair editor-in-chief of Prevention magazine, the 66-year-old title that is set to go ad-free beginning with its July issue.

In addition to taking the big step of ditching all advertising, the pocket-size title had burned through three editors in four years. Rodale Editorial Director

Michael Lafavore had been supervising Prevention since former Editor-in-Chief Bruce Kelley was given the old heave-ho in January. At that time, Chairman and CEO

Maria Rodale announced that the magazine was going to take the unusual step of going ad-free.

O’Dair resigned on Tuesday as executive editor of Reader’s Digest, a job she held for more than eight years. In an interesting twist, O’Dair had been reporting to Kelley, who landed as the editor-inchief of Reader’s Digest a month after he was ousted from Prevention.

The ad-free strategy evolved because Rodale was finding it was getting too expensive to sustain a high rate base — the minimum amount of circulation that the company was promising advertisers it would deliver each issue.

Ad rates are based on the total circulation. But with Prevention’s rate base at 1.5 million, Rodale was forced to deliver over 61,000 free copies each month to meet its rate base.

Its paid subscriptions had tumbled 32.3 percent in the second half of 2015, to just over 1.26 million, and its single-copy sales dropped 8.2 percent, to 212,858 per issue.

Advertising was actually up in 2015, but it was still not sufficient to cover its circulation costs and turn a profit.

So Rodale decided to gamble that it could charge higher newsstand and subscription prices, print fewer copies and ultimately return the magazine — one of the company’s oldest brands — to profitability.

“By moving to an ad-free model, we can focus on generating con- sumer revenue, which has always been the driving force in Prevention’s success as a brand,” said Lafavore, who supervised the first adfree version hitting next month.

90-day pay

AOL told its vendors and suppliers — including, apparently, editorial freelancers contributing to its Huffington Post — that it is going to stretch out payments to 90 days.

Verizon completed its $4.4 billion acquisition of AOL last June, and according to one source, has been going over costs and looking for areas to cut.

“They are looking at everything,” said the source, who was among many who received the “Dear AOL Supplier” letter from Lara Sweet, chief accounting officer and controller of AOL.

“Effective 30 days from the receipt of this letter, your net payment terms with AOL will become 90 days,” said the letter from Sweet. The only exception would be suppliers operating with a contract.

But that won’t last long, either, before terms are changed. “Any contract renewal or new contracts will be moved to 90 days,” the letter read.

The move is likely to anger everyone from hard-pressed freelance journalists to suppliers and manufacturers.

“That’s a very long wait to be paid,” said one freelancer. “It’s not like they are a small company with cash-flow problems. It strikes me as they are just being mean.”

An AOL spokeswoman pinned the blame on the new parent company.

“This is a leading industry practice that Verizon implemented last year,” she said. “As part of Verizon, we are aligning on this policy.

“We are honoring all current contracts,” she added.

Time tech

Time Inc. insiders are speculating that the Seattle office, which was set up in part to lure hires from the tech-rich city, could be cut back or phased out now that Chief Technology Officer Colin Bodell has been bounced.

Jen Wong, president of Time Inc. Digital, is seen as the new rising tech star. She was recruited from Pop Sugar in December and is based in New York.

One Seattle staffer, Vice President

J.T. Kostman, was out along with Bodell, who split his time between Seattle and New York. Another Seattle-based vice president, Eric

Schoonover, is said to have left to take a job with the federal government.

Wong “is already skeptical of any work coming out of that office,” said the source. “It’s just a matter of timing on whether they quit or the office is eliminated.”

Bloomberg suit

A Greek Orthodox priest who runs a small hedge fund on the side hhas filed a $100 million libel and defamation suit against Bloomberg LP, along with a reporter and an editor. Father Emmanuel Lemelson said he was defamed by the story “Hedge Fund Priest’s Trades Probed by Wall Street Cop,” that claimed — wrongly — that he was being investigated for possible stock manipulation. The article was written by Matt Robinson and edited by Jesse Westbrook. A Bloomberg spokesman said, “We stand by our story.”