I was interviewed and quoted in an article in Bloomberg Businessweek magazine about the talk about the merger of Time Inc. and Meredith. My quotes are below and click here to read the entire article.
The combined company would have been hampered by an identity crisis, says Samir Husni, the founder and director of the Magazine Innovation Center at the University of Mississippi. “What would be their message to their advertisers?” says Husni. “After all these years, you’ve been selling, ‘service, service, service, service.’ Now all of a sudden you are telling your advertisers, we are also selling celebrities, news, and fashion. If you look at the core DNA of Meredith, that’s the anti-Meredith. E.T. Meredith would be rolling in his grave.”
Meredith editors are the masters of perennial editorial products. Last month they published an ad-supported “bookazine,” entitled Chicken Dinners. To date, Meredith’s core business of selling service journalism to women has been largely insulated from the faster pace of the Internet, and given the company plenty of breathing room to build out its digital strategy for the future. “Chicken Dinners is Chicken Dinners whether you buy it in May, June, or July,” says Husni.
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