Time Inc., the nation's largest magazine publisher and owner of titles like People and Time, announced another editorial shakeup Wednesday, marking its second masthead move in a week.
Hunter Lewis, the executive editor at Time Inc.'s Southern Living magazine, was named editor of Cooking Light on Wednesday. He replaces Scott Mowbray, who is retiring from the magazine after 17 years with Time Inc., the company said.
Cooking Light's paid and verified circulation through the first half of 2014 is about 1.8 million, roughly the same as last year, according to the Alliance for Audited Media, which tracks magazine circulation. Print ad pages have declined 2% through September, according to Media Industry Newsletter.
On Monday, Time Inc.'s Travel & Leisure hired Nathan Lump, who was director of branded content at rival magazine publisher Conde Nast, to serve as its top editor. He replaces longtime editor Nancy Novogrod, who announced her retirement last month.
Travel & Leisure's print circulation was about 974,000 through the first six months of the year, about the same as the same period last year. Print ad pages were up 6.6%.
In addition to various editorial roles, Mr. Lump's career has included tours at two advertising agencies: Hill Holliday in Boston and JWT in New York. At both agencies, he led content strategy on behalf of clients. The business-side experience "has given me a pretty nuanced and sophisticated perspective on the ways the media landscape is evolving and what marketers are looking for from their media partners," he told Ad Age.
"The editor of today," he added, "is very much called upon to be not only a great editor but in many ways a brand owner, a business owner, a CEO of the brand."
Last month, Time Inc.'s Fortune magazine also replaced its top editor, Andy Serwer, with Alan Murray.
The editorial shakeups come in the wake up of Time Warner spinning off Time Inc. into a separate publicly traded company in June. Second-quarter revenue at Time Inc. was down 2% to $820 million. Ad revenue during the quarter climbed 3%, fueled mostly by Time Inc.'s acquisition last year of American Express Publishing, which includes Travel & Leisure and Food & Wine magazines. Without those titles, ad revenue would have declined 6%.
Time Inc.'s leadership has sought to grow ad sales partly by knocking down the company's longheld barriers between its editorial and ad sales departments. Last year, CEO Joe Ripp told editors to start reporting to their magazines' business sides.
In the last two weeks, the company has drawn criticism for its perceived coziness with advertisers. A report on Gawker showed that writers for Sports Illustrated's website were evaluated by how "beneficial" their content was to advertisers. In response to the Gawker post, a spokesman for Sports Illustrated said the magazine's "editorial content is uncompromised and speaks for itself."
This week, New York magazine profiled Time Inc. in a story that included a number of provocative statements from both former editors and some of the company's current leaders. Mr. Ripp, for instance, is quoted as saying: "The reality is, magazines as a print business will ultimately die. If we don't transform this company, someone else will come in and do it." The statement didn't sit well with many staffers at Time Inc., which still draws the bulk of its revenue from print magazines.
