COSMOGIRL IS PICK FOR SEVENTEEN ED
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Seventeen has finally found a new editor-in-chief to replace Atoosa Rubenstein, whose sudden departure in November surprised many in the mag world.
The mag’s new editrix is Ann Shoket – now executive editor at CosmoGirl, another teen title owned by Hearst.
Shoket faces a tough task, keeping a magazine that was once the undisputed queen of the teen mags relevant and growing in a market that has constricted recently.
Although Seventeen’s single copy sales were over 400,000 and up 2.5 percent in 2006, according to Hearst estimates, its ad sales were down about 3 percent to 939 ad pages.
Meanwhile, Condé Nast’s Teen Vogue is claiming it will surpass Seventeen by about 200 ad pages this year. Final numbers have yet to be released by the Publishers Information Bureau, but through November the pint-sized rival had a 216-page lead over Seventeen.
Two other teen magazines folded in the past year: Time Inc.’s Teen People and Hachette Filipacchi’s Elle Girl. Over the past few years, YM and Teen magazine also disappeared.
On the Web, Condé Nast also is putting big bucks behind a teen Web site called Flip.com
Shoket, the 34-year-old editor, was moving into her new office on the 17th floor of the Hearst Tower, and wasn’t available to discuss her new job.
Hearst President Cathie Black, who purchased the mag four years ago from Primedia, said she still has confidence in the Seventeen brand and the market.
“We bought it four years ago and we had a two-year period of rebuilding the fundamentals,” Black said.
She pointed out that growth areas for the brand don’t have to be confined to print, with the Web.
She said seventeen.com, cosmogirl.com and teenmag.com draw a combined average of 6.3 million unique visitors a month.
“We have to be smart enough and innovative enough to talk to the teenage girl in any kind of media she wants,” said Black, who has a teenage daughter.
Black had also called Rubenstein yesterday to inform the ex-editor that one of her proteges from her days as CosmoGirl launch editor was going to succeed her. Rubenstein left Seventeen to pursue her own business opportunities in the teen-oriented news market.
“I was really happy to hear the news from Cathie,” said Rubenstein. “She [Shoket] has a real head on her shoulders, she knows what it takes to edit a magazine in the category and she has some digital background.”