New Hearst Magazines Pres Wants to Make One Thing Perfectly Clear

It’s official. Debi Chirichella, who was serving as acting president of Hearst Magazines, was recently appointed President. And she wants to make one thing perfectly clear: Print remains the backbone of their organization.

“For several years,” Debi Chirichella told Samir “Mr. Magazine” Husni in a recent interview, “our strategy has been to expand our business model by focusing on new delivery platforms. And that’s going to include not just print, but also going deeper into digital, social and video, and exploring and developing new revenue streams anchored by our brands. But for Hearst, print is an important component of our strategy and our print editions really do remain the flagship of each brand.”

It’s refreshing to hear this kind of solid support for the ongoing relevance of print magazines. This year, it comes with solid evidence from readers that print magazines are truly essential to their lives, especially in times of uncertainty. 

Hearst is backing this up with a multi-million investment in their print titles, thanks to their success with membership and paywall programs and their “chicken nugget math” approach to sales.

According to Chirichella, print “validates our brands’ authority with our consumers and with our advertisers.” In turn, that strong support for print translates into solid digital growth, where the revenue stream can grow.

“Despite the challenges of 2020, we’re exiting the year with momentum,” Chirichella told Husni. “And in 2021 we just want to build on that momentum. We’ve made great strides in diversifying our brands across platforms, and then taking the audiences we’re building and diversifying them across multiple revenue streams.”

This is excellent news for our industry and further proof that print magazines are an important experience in our digital-weary lives.

The takeaway for publishers is this: Connect with your readers in a deeper, stronger way and make yourself essential. Positioning your price relative to chicken nuggets doesn’t hurt either, especially now that the subscription model is second nature for so many of the things we use every day, from grocery deliveries to TV.

“We’ve been focused on leveraging the power of our brands to create the best products and to build strong audiences,” she continues. “We are investing in deepening our consumer relationships. We’re supporting growth in our digital offerings. We’re leveraging our sophisticated data and our technology capabilities to serve our advertisers. All of these are things that we started in and prior to 2020 and will continue in 2021 because they’re working and we see great growth opportunities there. We’ve been focused on leveraging the power of our brands to create the best products and to build strong audiences. We are investing in deepening our consumer relationships. We’re supporting growth in our digital offerings. We’re leveraging our sophisticated data and our technology capabilities to serve our advertisers. All of these are things that we started in and prior to 2020 and will continue in 2021 because they’re working and we see great growth opportunities there.”

This very public focus on the importance of print magazines to Hearst should bolster all of us as we move ahead into 2021. Even with the challenges and setbacks we saw this year, the publishers who were able to tap into the needs of their audience continued to thrive.