Are magazines on their deathbeds? The past few years have seen several well-known titles such as Gourmet, Blender and Jane fold because of dwindling readership, a poor advertising climate and readers shifting to the Internet. However, ask David Carey, president of Hearst Magazines and Adweek’s Publisher of the Year for 2011, and he’ll tell you that the magazine industry isn’t dying; instead, it’s thriving—if publishers are willing to join the digital world.
On October 12, David Carey will join the Paley Center for Media for a live event on FORA.tv. Carey will discuss the current trends in the magazine industry and how publishers are learning to embrace new media to maintain readership and sell ad space.
David Carey of Hearst Magazines
One of the keys to Carey’s recent success has been to build partnerships between his magazines and media companies to create dynamic, interactive content for the Web. According to an article in Adweek, Carey says that an emphasis on the “partnership mind-set” will give magazines’ online and print articles more shelf-life because there is more content for a reader to digest, and more ad space for a marketer to buy.
Before Carey joined Hearst Magazines, he was a longtime group president at Conde Nast Publications and oversaw the growth of Wired, the famous technology monthly that eased naturally into digital publication on both the Internet and Apple’s iPad. He also served as the publisher of the New Yorker in the early 2000s. During his tenure, the magazine’s readership topped 1 million for the first time and advertising revenues doubled.
Even though Carey has seen great success with Wired and the New Yorker, he has had to learn from his mistakes, too. From 2007 to 2009, he launched Portfolio, an ambitious $100 million magazine project directed at high-income business readers, that was ultimately doomed by the recession.
Join this live streaming event and watch as David Carey discusses why magazines must be able to move nimbly in order survive in today’s publishing world.
Watch David Carey speak live at the Paley Center at FORA.tv.