Like every other magazine publisher, Time Inc. has a difficult task: It’s trying to protect its declining legacy business and compete with nimbler digital upstarts at the same time.
Time Inc. has hired startup veteran Julie Alvin to help its digital properties
The Bustle editor will run digital for InStyle, Real Simple and other brands.
Rosanne Salvatore
Peter Kafka covered media and technology, and their intersection, at Vox. Many of his stories can be found in his Kafka on Media newsletter, and he also hosts the Recode Media podcast.
If you are skeptical about its chances, you aren’t alone: Wall Street has been punishing the company since April, when it announced that it wasn’t going to sell itself.
So meet a believer: Julie Alvin, who has been a top editor at Bustle — one of those nimble upstarts trying to carve up Time Inc. — is joining the company to become Senior Digital Director, Lifestyle.
In English, that means Alvin will be heading up digital for multiple Time Inc. brands, including InStyle, Real Simple and Hello Giggles, a digital publisher Time acquired two years ago.
Alvin had been at Bustle for four years (an important number for startup employees with equity to vest), and had spent the last year and change as the equivalent of its No. 3 editor.
Why’s she leaving?
“I liked the idea of kind of going back to a legacy publishing house and helping to steer their digital future,” says Alvin, who got her start as an assistant at Conde Nast, another one of the big traditional publishers facing big issues.
Here’s a nice send-off quote from Alvin’s boss, Bustle founder and CEO Bryan Goldberg: “Julie has contributed a great deal to Bustle, and we wish her the best in her new role. That a venerable publisher like Time Inc turns to Bustle to source its future leaders — that tells us we are doing things right.”
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
See More:
