With print magazines having lost readers and advertisers in recent years, one of the world’s largest magazine publishers has turned to a digital specialist as its new leader.
On Wednesday, Hearst Magazines, the company behind venerable titles like Esquire, Harper’s Bazaar and Cosmopolitan, named Troy Young, 50, as its president, effective immediately. Mr. Young, who spent nearly five years running the company’s digital media division, succeeds David Carey, 57, who started as the head of Hearst Magazines in 2010 and will stay on as its chairman through the end of 2019.
“Troy has done an outstanding job building our world-class digital business,” Steven R. Swartz, the president and chief executive of Hearst’s corporate parent, Hearst Communications, said in a statement. “He brings great skill and enthusiasm to this new challenge, leading our global magazine brands, in print and digital form, to ever higher levels of editorial and commercial excellence.”
Mr. Young changed the corporate structure at Hearst Magazines so that the digital teams creating content for the magazines’ websites reported to him, rather than to the editors of the individual titles. In recent years Hearst’s multiplatform unique viewership has nearly doubled, and the company opened a 26,000-square-foot production studio near the Hearst Tower in Midtown Manhattan.
“Troy understands how vital it is for our brands to engage more actively with consumers across platforms,” Mark E. Aldam, Hearst Communications’ chief operating officer, said in a statement.
Last October, the company agreed to acquire Rodale, the publisher of Men’s Health, Runner’s World and Prevention, among other magazines. The deal was made final in January.
Mr. Young’s appointment at the company, which was founded by William Randolph Hearst in 1887, comes at a time when the magazine industry is in steep decline. Before its acquisition by Meredith Corporation, Time Inc. had lost revenue every year since 2011. Hearst’s sometime rival, Condé Nast, the publisher of The New Yorker, Vogue and Vanity Fair, cut roughly 80 employees last year while also reducing the frequency of certain magazines’ print editions and ceasing the regular print publication of Teen Vogue.
“Hearst Magazines is an extraordinary content company, well positioned to thrive in today’s media ecosystem,” Mr. Young said in a statement. “Our powerful brands are part of consumers’ daily lives on every medium, from print to voice to video, and we’re serving consumers and marketers with increasing engagement and precision across platforms.”
