Hearst Mags beefs up video team, Time’s déjà vu cover: Publisher’s Brief

Welcome to the latest edition of Ad Age Publisher’s Brief, our roundup of news from the world of content producers across digital and print. Got a tip? Send it our way. Joining us late? Here’s the previous edition. Video stars: At Hearst Magazines, Michael Sebastian has been getting all the attention this week, thanks to his elevation on Monday from digital director at Esquire.com to editor-in-chief of Esquire overall (print and digital). But elsewhere in the glossy empire, two other key appointments just went down—both having to do with the company’s rising video ambitions. First, Zuri Rice is the new senior VP and head of video development and content strategy at Hearst Originals, the company’s video-production division that is currently putting out 50-plus original series—everything from Men’s Health’s “Gym & Fridge” to Delish’s “Iconic Eats” to O, The Oprah Magazine’s “The OG Chronicles.” Rice spent 14 years at Viacom, including serving as senior VP of short-form video at Viacom Digital Studios. And Todd Joyce is the new VP of video sales for Hearst Originals, which means he’ll be selling sponsorships and pre-rolls for those 50-plus series and at least a dozen more shows under development. Joyce was previously senior VP of East Coast sales for Defy Media, a video-centric startup that shut down last year—and then Hearst snapped up some of its assets, including Clevver. A Hearst Magazines spokesperson tells Ad Age that so far in 2019, video revenue is up almost 300 percent compared to the year-ago period. Merged: “Business Insider and eMarketer are taking their relationship to the next level with a merging of their intelligence units, as parent company Axel Springer invests in serving more corporate clients,” Ad Age’s Garett Sloane reports. Until now, both had operated independently since being acquired by Axel Springer. Manly: Playboy, which this year went to a quarterly frequency, examines masculinity circa 2019 in its new issue—which has the overall theme of “On Gender & Sexuality”—and in a “Future of Masculinity” event in New York City on Friday, June 21. Per the invite, Playboy is honored to have worked with Matt McGorry (“How to Get Away With Murder” and “Orange Is the New Black”) as the guest editor of our Summer 2019 quarterly’s Symposium, a seven-page essay collection that examines masculinity and the theme of power. At the Playhouse, McGorry teams up with Playboy once again to produce “The Future of Masculinity,” a thoughtful and inclusive discussion featuring panelists McGorry has handpicked based on their forward-thinking work on the topic. The conversation will focus on the ideas of masculinity, social responsibilities that fall on masculine people, how masculine energy can be harnessed for good and the paths we can all take to progress the dialogue in society today. Interested in attending? You can RSVP here. Street value: “Jim Cramer’s financial news company The Street has agreed to sell”—to The Maven, the New York Post’s Keith Kelly reports. And finally… I feel slightly bad for saying this, but at first glance the photo on the cover of Time’s latest issue (see the top of this post) looked to me like it was from a lost (and saddest-ever) Rolling Stone shoot. Because for decades, one of the go-to visual clichés when photographing celebrities has been immersing them partially or fully in water—and no publication has done that more often than Rolling Stone. It’s supposed to convey, I dunno, creative baptism or something? Buoyancy? Water-resistance? See, for instance, RS’s cover starring country star Eric Church (below) from last summer. But Time’s cover star actually has a really good reason for getting wet. He’s United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, pictured standing in the waters off the coast of Tuvalu, which Time calls “one of the world’s most vulnerable countries” as global sea levels rise. Guterres looks thoroughly miserable—and let’s assume that has to do with how he feels about climate change, and not a reflection of his thoughts about what the salt water is doing to his (presumably) expensive suit. Anyway, you can read the full cover story, by Justin Worland—with photos by Christopher Gregory—here: “The Leaders of These Sinking Countries Are Fighting to Stop Climate Change. Here’s What the Rest of the World Can Learn.” Eric Church appears on our new cover. He sounds off on what's wrong with the NRA, loving Bernie Sanders and that time he almost died https://t.co/HliDCur0Ay pic.twitter.com/i3HLwX2BVK— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) July 25, 2018

Hearst Mags beefs up video team, Time’s déjà vu cover: Publisher’s Brief

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