Saturday, June 14, 2014

Hearst’s new approach to digital news

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).
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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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