Former Hearst president Troy Young. Photo-Illustration: Joe Darrow. Photo: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for Harper’s BAZAAR This article was featured in One Great Story, New York’s reading recommendation newsletter. Sign up here to get it nightly.
“People didn’t love the way he was allowed to respond within that story,” a former Cosmopolitan.com editor says. “It felt like Hearst was fully behind him with that non-denial denial that was in the story.” But deeply upset employees were already flooding their managers with complaints. Some of the more senior employees who knew Young, according to the Hearst executive, “kind of rolled their eyes at [Young’s reported behavior], but younger women on the teams — they had serious issues.
Despite occupying an impressive, origami-inspired midtown office tower and sharing a name with one of America’s great dynastic fortunes, Hearst Magazines has always existed in the shadow of rival glossy publisher Condé Nast. Elle could never be Vogue. Hearst wasn’t synonymous with lavishly salaried and perked one-name celebrity editors à la Graydon and Anna.
In 2013, Carey hired Troy Young, who had been consulting for Hearst for the previous eight months — focusing on how to make Cosmopolitan.com profitable, since newsstand sales of the print magazine, the division’s biggest moneymaker by far, were plunging like nearly every magazine’s at the time — to run the digital division.
Hearst editors were at first excited when Young arrived, one says, thinking he would help them digitize their brands. But he quickly alienated many editors. “He was arrogant,” one recalls. “He had no interest in learning about the media.” Young spoke in a grating Silicon Valley argot about “the sprint toward excellence” and how he was going to “pressure-cook” an idea.
Part of what Young had been brought in to do was experiment. During his tenure, Hearst’s recipe website, Delish, became one of the five most popular food sites on the internet by making heavy use of video. Young also launched BestProducts.com, a Wirecutter-like product-recommendation site. “E-commerce is a hugely important part of current revenue streams,” a Hearst executive says, “and it was born because Troy and the digital leadership could execute without noise from the print products.
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