Commentary

'You're Fired!': Familiar Refrain At Conde Nast, Time Inc. Too?

Nervous about their place in a world of massive media transformations,  magazine publishers keep changing the lineup of editorial team players — a trend certainly evident last week, which saw personnel shifts at both Time Inc.’s InStyle and Condé Nast’s Glamour.

Instyle’s editorial director Ariel Foxman said his resignation — effective in August, after he puts to bed the traditionally biggest issue of the year, September — was voluntary. Still, “skepticism abounds” on whether that’s true, wrote Keith Kelly in the New York Post.  In fact, the announcement came shortly after a corporate restructuring, and Kelly cited sources who noted an issue “around how much the job became about digital when [Foxman’s] love and strength are print.”

But in light of the fact that Time Inc. seems to be struggling with replacing Foxman, who had such a pivotal role, maybe it was his decision after all. This week the company announced that Lisa Arbetter, currently editor of Time Inc.’s StyleWatch, will also be interim editor of InStyle.

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Things were more clear-cut at Glamour, which last week confirmed it was axing recently hired executive director of editorial operations John Dioso, along with a senior fashion news editor, and photo and copy desk staffers, according to WWD.

Those layoffs come in the wake of many others, often orchestrated by Anna Wintour, who in March 2013 expanded her role at Condé Nast beyond Vogue editor in chief  to become the company’s artistic director, with editorial purview over all other pubs.

Here’s the (backwards) chronological body count so far for editors in chief of Condé Nast glossies since Wintour ascended the editorial throne:

— In May, Margaret Russell lost her place at the top of Architectural Digest’s masthead to Amy Astley, previously Teen Vogue editor in chief.

— Last November, Linda Wells, veteran founding editor of Allure, was replaced by Nylon Media’s former Editor In Chief and Marketing Officer Michelle Lee.

— In 2014 Self’s Editor in Chief Lucy Danziger was fired, while Joyce Chang (formerly executive editor of Cosmopolitan) marched her Self to the top of that masthead.

— In 2013, Condé Nast Traveler’s Klara Glowczewska was replaced by former Martha Stewart Living editor in chief Pilar Guzmán.

— Also in 2013, Lucky’s Brandon Holley was axed for former Teen Vogue Senior Editor Eva Chen — two years before Lucky’s final death throes in 2015. (Holley herself had been a replacement for Lucky’s founding editor, Kim France, back in 2010).

Right now Glamour’s Cindi Leive is the only editor in chief of a Condé Nast women’s magazine still standing after Wintour took on her new duties (besides Wintour, of course an icon as Vogue editor in chief, and Keija Mino, editor in chief of Brides magazine, seemingly apart from the fray).

How has Leive, who has been at the helm of Glamour for 15 years, kept that spot? Her strength may be due to the pub’s relative stability as an advertising and editorial force.

As for the advertising part of the equation, it’s hard to say exactly what’s happening, especially since the Association of Magazine Media no longer provides information on ad pages.

But in a survey of the ad-page count of September 2015 fashion books — a figure that’s “long been used as a yardstick for magazine brands' performance relative to the year before as well as to each other,” according to Chantal Fernandez writing in Fashionista — “a source with knowledge of [Glamour’s] ad numbers says they actually increased by 7 percent year-over-year.”

On the edit side, Glamour has won a number of National Magazine Awards during Leive’s tenure, most recently a 2015 award for General Excellence — testament to its mix of ambitious journalism and fashion/beauty coverage unique among women’s books.

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