Thinking Different Helps Hearst Survive

Hearst may be no stranger to layoffs but The New York Times insists the company is doing well due to unique initiatives, like not putting all of its magazines’ content online for free, upping newsstand prices and increasing book sizes instead of shrinking them. (But as Sunday’s article mentions, Hearst is part of a private company so its exact revenue figures are unknown.)

Although all of these moves seem contrary to currently held beliefs in the magazine industry, they’re working for Hearst, the company argues. In today’s economic climate, as media companies struggle to find a digital pay wall structure that will work towards keeping them profitable, it’s refreshing to see a company trying to solve its problems in different, and successful, ways.

“I want 1.6 million women to go to the newsstand every month to buy Cosmo, and they do,” Hearst president Cathie Black told the Times. “We don’t want that genie out of the bottle. I don’t have any interest in challenging that economic model.”

Two Hearst executives, senior vice president and general manager of Digital Media Chuck Cordray and Tom Smith, senior director of Digital Media/IT, will be at Mediabistro Circus tomorrow. We’ll keep you posted about what they say about the future of Hearst and magazine journalism.

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