@ EconWomen: Tina Brown Tells Cathie Black She'd 'Hate To Be In Magazine World'
This story was written by Patrick Smith.
Cathie Black and Tina Brown famously clashed over the ill-fated Talk magazine, which Brown edited and Black was involved in killing earlier this decade. It's clear from Brown's interview of Black today at our EconWomen conference that the pair continue to have divergent views about the magazine world.
Hearst Magazines has yet to find the perfect model to monetize a print and online business, but Black, its president, said she is convinced the future will involve an intelligent mixture of the two. Brown, now a digital entrepreneur after decades in the magazine business, didn't try to hide her new loyalties. "I would hate to be in the magazine worldit's a really tough world to have to compete in." Brown, proprieter of The Daily Beast, said that "many more magazines" probably will fail. "Magazines that are niche franchisesI would expect that most of that will go online."
Black also gave a spirited defense of her company's online strategy: "We have 24 website and 9 mobile sites - I spend 20 to 30 percent of my day doing relating to something digital. We have some balls up in the air and I hope there are some dollars in there somewhere. That's the question - can we monetize the web?" (Separately, at the conference Hearst offered paidContent some non public data that shows healthy traffic growth for its online business: According to figures from Omniture, since Hearst Women's Network left iVillage a year ago, its page views have grown from 33 million per month to more than 100 million this month.
More after the jump, including the skinny on Talk magazine
-- Profitability: Brown asked how much money Hearst made from online. "It depends how you define money," said Black to some chuckles in the audience. She said Hearst made around $100m online this year through acquired sites, 2.2 million paid subscriptions, newsstand sales and advertising revenues. "Why do people always get metaphysical when you ask about how much money they make?" said Brown.
-- Advertising models have to change: While Black conceded that something has to change in the magazine industry, advertisers, too, need to look at themselves: "Right now, I think the right structure is a digital unit selling digital ads with things like strong client contacts but the ad budgets have got to be there." She said Hearst had a tough Q4 where "a lot of advertising spend stopped; it did not go on the internet". Blac said that magazine publishers have to be their own ad agencies, selling their own cross-platform packages, adding that Hearst has made $30m from in-house deals this year. But isn't that a burden? asked Brown. "That's right it is." Black said she would jump for joy if the split between print and digital ad spend made it to an even 50 percent.
-- Brand matters: It's far easier to make digital revenues from mega-brand titles like Cosmopolitan, which sells upwards of eight million copies a month than smaller outfits, said Black. "Cosmo is such a big brand in beauty and fashion in particular; it is a true brand ID. Town and Countryit's life is not going to be in the digital space, it's just too small, and the ad agencies want a program that has 22 different elements to it."
-- Original vs repurposed content: Magazine publishers have for years grappled with the ratio of original content to repurposed magazine content on their websites. For Black, simply republishing magazines wholesale digitally has to be a no-no. "The general feeling four or five years ago was that it was a magazine online. But It didn't take long to figure out that that's not what the user wants online. It needs the touch and feel of the magazinebut they ned fun stuff, like videos, too," she said.
Why buy when it's online for free? Brown recalled jealously guarding her print scoops when she was editing Vanity Fair, only to see news organizations match the story while the magazine was winding its way through the streets via snail mail to its readers. "Now it's all put online and I ask myself: What is the point of buying it?" Some Hearst editors use online as a way to drive newsstand sales, said Black: "Editors have to live within two worlds."
Talk about the elephant in the room: The specter hanging over the pair's public appearance together was the failed Talk magazine, which folded in 2002 after backers Hearst and Miramax pulled out. Black assured us that the two women have "worked it out" since then. The problem was all a question of timing says Brown it should have been a website. "It was straddled between those two eras [print and online] and I thought then it would have been great online."
By Patrick Smith