A changing of the guard is about to take place at Hearst Corporation. Steven Swartz, currently the company’s president and COO, is going to succeed Frank Bennack as CEO. Swartz will become only the company’s seventh CEO when he takes on the role June 1.

Bennack — who has been with Hearst for 50 years, and CEO for 28 of those — will stay on as executive vice chairman of the company’s board and chairman of its Executive Committee. Swartz has been groomed for the top spot for quite awhile, but it is still a marked changed in the company’s history. The only person who served as CEO of Hearst longer than Bennack is William Randolph Hearst.

Swartz has been COO since early 2011 and added the president role late last year. Prior to his promotion to COO, he served as senior vice president and president of Hearst Newspapers. In a statement, Bennack said Swartz was more than ready to be CEO.

“Steve has dedicated himself to our company for more than 20 years and during the past two years we have been working side-by-side to position Hearst for our next 100 years. I speak on behalf of the entire Board of Directors when I say we have the utmost confidence in Steve stepping into the role of CEO in June and leading Hearst into a strong future of successful media and information businesses and brands around the globe.”

Ahead of its premiere at two New York City theaters next week, FishbowlNY attended a screening of Citizen Hearst Monday at the SoHo House. The documentary, directed by Academy Award nominee Leslie Iwerks and narrated by William H. Macy, celebrates the 125th anniversary of the company, interviewing current and former executives for an inside look at the company.

The documentary traces William Randolph Hearst‘s career trajectory from college-dropout publisher of the San Francisco Examiner to the founder of a media empire that boasts 51 newspapers, 300 magazines and 29 television stations. In an interview for the documentary, Dan Rather calls Hearst a “reformist journalist” who just “wanted to make a difference.”

Citizen Hearst features interviews with editors of some of the company’s top magazines, including Harper’s Bazaar, Cosmopolitan, Town & Country and Esquire. Several generations of Hearsts were interviewed, along with several major media personalities including Oprah Winfrey, Bob Iger, Leonard Maltin and Heidi Klum. The film also investigates how major events like the San Francisco earthquake in 1989 and the terrorist attacks of 9/11 have impacted the company.

The documentary will be shown at two NYC locations — the Chelsea Theatre and the 1st & 62nd Theatre — on March 14.

Citizen Hearst also featured an interview with the architect of the Hearst Tower in Manhattan, which MediabistroTV got a tour of last year. Watch it after the jump. Read more

Neeraj Khemlani has been named chief creative officer of Hearst Corporation. Khemlani transitions into this role from Hearst Entertainment & Syndication, where he served deputy group head in charge of non-fiction TV production.

“We want to make sure we offer the best possible user experiences across our brands in all forms,” said Frank Bennack Jr., CEO of Hearst Corp., in a statement. “The genuine value we deliver to readers, viewers, listeners and professional clients through our content determines whether we are successful. Neeraj will work across all our divisions as a champion of the innovation needed to constantly increase that value.”

Khemlani has been with Hearst since 2009.

Hearst Corporation has announced two leadership changes at Hearst Television. David Barrett has been named chairman and CEO and Jordan Wertlieb has been named president.

Barrett, a director of Hearst Corp., most recently served as president and CEO of Hearst Television. He has been with Hearst since 1984, when he served as general manager of the company’s Baltimore-based radio stations.

Wertlieb had been executive vice president of Hearst Television since January of last year. Prior to that, Wertlieb was WBAL-TV’s president and general manager for six years.

Both appointments are effective immediately.

Steven Swartz has been promoted from executive vice president and chief operating officer of Hearst Corporation to president and chief operating officer. Swartz has been COO since March of last year. Prior to that he was senior vice president of Hearst Corp. and president of Hearst Newspapers.

“Having worked with Steve for more than 20 years, I’m highly confident he will succeed in this new role — just as he has in every position he’s held with Hearst since 1991,” Frank Bennack, CEO of Hearst Corp., said in a statement. “He has my full support, and that of the entire Board of Directors, as he continues to increase his day-to-day responsibilities in helping to run the corporation.”

Swartz’s appointment is effective immediately.

Hearst has opened a lab dedicated to developing apps on the 41st floor of Hearst Tower. The “Hearst App Lab” (let’s hope the developers are more creative than the name) area comes equipped with several high-tech features. There’s a wall of video screens that can be written on and used to display apps, a high definition camera that broadcasts video onto the wall, and furniture that can be altered easily, depending on how big the crowd is.

Adweek reports that Hearst App Lab is expected to draw plenty of people through its doors:

David Carey, president of Hearst Magazines, said the idea was to have a place where employees can learn about the tablet market, develop apps, and brainstorm ideas with advertisers and ad buyers. Hearst will also use it to test its apps with focus.

Sounds like a smart idea. As apps become more valuable to publishers, we can expect these type of areas to increase.

Ad Age is reporting that Next Issue Media (NIM) has finally launched magazine apps on tablets that aren’t called iPad. NIM was hopeful back in January that when it launched it would feature two magazines from each of the publishing houses that own a stake in it (Hearst, Meredith, Conde Nast, Time), but it looks to have fallen short of that goal.

As of now, there are seven magazines available through the Verizon V Cast Store: Time, Fortune, The New Yorker, Esquire, Fitness and Parents. Just like the Apple subscriptions, consumers can purchase a single issue or subscribe for a year.

It’s a good start for NIM, because even though the iPad is the most popular tablet, there are always going to be consumers who want to use something else. Now those people have a way to read some of their favorite magazines on tablets.

NIM is taking a small step here, but that’s better than nothing at all.

Today David Carr takes a look at publishing houses finally shaking hands with Apple, and asks “Is the iPad just a new way to give away magazines?” He says that the companies need to be careful that they don’t give up too much by dealing with Apple, but it seems to be too late for that:

Chip Block, a now retired publishing executive who has consulted all over the industry, worries that publishers are replicating a print model that is short on revenue from consumers and leaves the industry once again reliant on the whims of advertisers.

First of all, can we just appreciate that name for a minute? Chip Block. That is one solid name. We’d believe anything someone with that kind of name tells us. If Chip Block tells us Sunny D is good for your skin, you better believe we’re taking a bath in that yellow crap tomorrow. Anyway! Back to Block’s insights. He says that what Conde Nast and Hearst should be doing is concentrating on making consumers happy, not advertisers:

Read more

Conde Nast and Hearst have both recently caved to the whims of the great and powerful Steve Jobs by implementing Apple’s subscription system, but Time Inc. remains unmoved. Steve Sachs, Time Inc.’s Executive Vice President for Consumer Marketing and Sales, tells Ad Age:

We have chosen not to do that [Apple's iPad subscriptions]. Because when we look at who to partner with, the key parts of our principles include, of course, making sure that the look and feel of products is great for consumers, and the ability to set pricing terms but also receiving key consumer data about subscribers. That is one of the major issues for us that we haven’t been able to agree on with Apple.

Time recently declared that print subscribers get iPad versions for free, and it sounds like that’s where it’ll stop. At least for now. FishbowlNY is willing to bet that within a year Time will adopt the system too, especially if the numbers for Conde and Hearst look good.

Time is being the rebel of the group by not bowing to Apple, but while the rebel act works for high school kids who have no intention of ever having a good career and Han Solo, we doubt that it’ll work for Time.