Here’s the full memo announcing major changes at Time Inc.
As part of the changes, Time Inc., which owns Time,Fortune, People, Money, Sports Illustrated, and other magazines and websites, is officially centralizing its advertising sales under one executive, Mark Ford, who is the company’s Chief Revenue Officer Global Advertising. The company described its ad sales restructuring as significant, and that it would refocus the unit into three divisions, including one group that will be focused on selling ads across titles. Time Inc.’s ad sales teams have historically been focused on selling ads for only individual brands.
On the editorial side, Alan Murray, the editor of Fortune, is taking over the role of chief content officer, replacing Norman Pearlstine. Pearlstine, a former executive editor of the Wall Street Journal and editor-in-chief at Time Inc., will remain at the company as vice chairman.
Jen Wong, the head of Time Inc.’s digital operations, will also take on the role of overseeing The Foundry, the company’s content studio. Rich Battista, a Time Inc. executive, will oversee all the company’s brands. Evelyn Webster, a long-time Time Inc. executive and former head of Time Inc. UK, is leaving the company.
Time Inc. has been looking for ways to better compete with digital startups, such as BuzzFeed, that have emerged in the past few years and are grabbing a larger portion of online ad dollars. Time Inc. said the changes are part of a transition that began when the company was spun-off from Time Warner two years ago. Shares of Time Inc. TIME -1.09 per cent, which initially traded for US$25 after the spinoff, rose slightly on Wednesday on the news of the reorganisation.
Read more about Time Inc.’s reorganisation.
See below a speech Joe Ripp made at last year’s FIPP World Congress in Toronto:
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