digiday reporting:
Hearst Magazines is building a centralized news desk to supply digital content to its 18 glossy magazines.
The desk is small for now, considering the size and diversity of
Hearst’s portfolio — it consists of two photo editors, one editor and
one writer — but Kate Lewis, vp of content operations and editorial
director for Hearst Digital, hopes to add more writers over time. The
idea is to cover the stories that have applicability to multiple titles,
cutting down on duplication and freeing them to do stories that are
more unique to them, she said.
“It is something we are building as we think about our competition and what our pure-play brethren are doing,” she said.
Legacy publishers have for years unified certain editorial functions
like copy editing and photo and graphics services. Newspaper chains have
long shared stories across their local papers. But as print fortunes
continue to wane, more centralization looks inevitable (Digital First Media’s closing its Thunderdome project notwithstanding).
...
Still, a centralized desk is potentially fraught with issues for
Hearst, with titles ranging from fashion and beauty (Elle, Cosmopolitan)
to shelter (House Beautiful, Country Living) to men’s (Esquire, Car and
Driver). Centralizing content production sounds good in theory but
raises questions for the individual brands, which may worry about a loss
of control or that the desk will come at the expense of dedicated
staff. Will the quality of the articles from the centralized desk be
better than what they could do themselves?
Lewis said that the news desk won’t replace but will augment what the
individual titles are doing and that titles will be expected to tailor
the desk’s stories to their sites.
“When Taylor Swift cuts her hair, I do not need six editors writing
that story,” she said. Of the Kim-Kanye wedding, she said, “We don’t
need 50 people writing about the first photos that come out.”
http://digiday.com/publishers/hearst-magazines-building-centralized-news-desk/
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