Hearst Promotes Troy Young to Magazines President

Hearst didn’t stray too far in finding a replacement for David Carey, the longtime president of its Magazines division.

Troy Young, leading digital media in the Magazines division for five years with a deep background in advertising, has been selected for the position, while Carey is retiring at the end of the year and moving to a yearlong role as chairman.

Steven Swartz, chief executive officer, said Young has “done an outstanding job” building the digital division of Hearst and “brings skill and enthusiasm to this new challenge.” He added that Young is tasked with leading the division “to ever higher levels of editorial and commercial excellence.”

Mark Aldam, chief operating officer, said Young “understands how vital it is for our brands to engage more actively with consumers across platforms.”

“His innovative approach to product development and high-quality brand experiences will continue to propel our industry-leading magazines forward,” Aldam added.

One of the things Young is credited with during his tenure as digital president is building MediaOS, a proprietary platform formally launched in early 2016 that manages content across Hearst Magazines and advertising, allowing editors to see story lists from across the portfolio and work in “trending” stories with branded content. The platform also provides traffic data and an internal chat platform.

Young said he’s taking on his new role at a time when Hearst is “well-positioned to thrive in today’s media ecosystem,” and he certainly seems to value advertisers as much as readers.

“Our powerful brands are part of consumers’ daily lives on every medium, from print to voice to video, and we’re serving consumers and marketers with increasing engagement and precision across platforms,” Young said.

Before coming to Hearst in 2013, Young was president of Say Media a tech-driven and digital-media-focused advertising firm, and also held executive roles at Organic, another advertising agency.

As for succeeding Carey, who served as Hearst Magazines president for a decade and has been in magazine publishing for close to 40 years, Young said he “has been and will continue to be an important adviser.”

For his part, Carey is set to leave the world of publishing behind. Although he will be Hearst chairman through 2019 after retiring at the end of the year, Carey is actually going to Harvard University to take part in the school’s Advanced Leadership Initiative. The program is something of a high-level continuing education program for experienced executives and businesspeople looking to make “an even greater societal impact.”

“I’ve had a very long career in magazine publishing and my focus now is to direct my energy toward societal issues,” Carey told WWD when he revealed his plans.

Unlike Young, Carey did not work directly in advertising before moving to the publishing side. He started on the business development side of magazines and spent more than a decade at Condé Nast, eventually becoming publisher of The New Yorker for many years before defecting to Hearst.

For More, See:

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