• by Sara Guaglione , February 6, 2018

Julie Alvin left Bustle, a start-up digital publisher for millennial women, after four years to join Time Inc. There, as of last year, she heads digital for a number of its brands. Today, at the annual American Magazine Media Conference (AMMC) hosted by the MPA–The Association of Magazine Media, Alvin said she is bringing the start-up mind-set to the legacy publisher, which is now owned by Meredith Corp.

“In a start-up environment, we had to say ‘yes’ to everything,” Alvin said. Conversely, at legacy publishers, she says it's more likely to hear:  'I don’t think I can do that' or 'That’s not the way we do things.' We had a bias towards action."

But Alvin likes to ask: Have you improved by sticking to the same script? “Have you experimented with other processes to see if they are better?”

That start-up ethos is what Alvin said is necessary for legacy publishers to innovate and stay relevant.

Eli Lippman, director of audience development at American Media Inc., was also on the panel with Alvin. It was moderated by New York Magazine editor Adam Moss and also included Jessica Shanken Reid, vice president of business development and new media at M. Shanken Communications.

Lippman said that growing up “in the digital realm” he knows online publishing changes “from millisecond to millisecond. I’m used to finding a storyline succeeding on the website and then two days later, have people not care and move on to something else,” he said.

An issue with legacy publishers is that “in traditional print, there is just a little bit of a lag. Maybe it’s generational, maybe it’s platform-specific,” he said.

But there is a solution — print can learn "all of the new digital toolkits that are available" and that will help "fuse" the businesses together, he argued.

But Alvin, who started her career at Conde Nast's Details, at a time when the brand didn’t have a website and “digital was just not a priority at all,” said she is up to that challenge.

“I really like the idea of returning to this world ... and helping steer the digital future of a legacy publisher,” she said.