Hearst Uses Startup Mentality in Revamp of Magazine Sites

From MediaShift - Hearst Corporation has a long and storied history as a media conglomerate, starting from the days of old-school media baron William Randolph Hearst and his twin inventions of the penny press and sensational journalism, all the way through its current form as a diversified private media company.

In the online arena, it has been more successful as an investor in Internet startups through Hearst Interactive Media (investments include iVillage, Brightcove, Sling Media, and XM Satellite Radio) than through websites related to its own magazines, newspapers or broadcast outlets. For a long time, Hearst’s magazine sites were outsourced completely through iVillage.

But once iVillage was sold to NBC Universal in May 2006, Hearst decided to invest more heavily in its Internet presence, and created a new division, Hearst Magazines Digital Media, dedicated to in-house website production and integration. While this was a late date to start running magazine adjunct websites, long a staple at other publishers, Hearst had the advantage of creating an Internet startup mentality within a big corporation, with little of the legacy systems of a Web 1.0 operation. In the past year, the division has hired more than 100 people (half of whom are in technical or production jobs), and has launched revamped sites for magazines such as Cosmopolitan, Redbook and Seventeen. | Read full article