Time Inc. has named Jed Hartman to the newly created role of group publisher of news and business, in keeping with what seems to be a newfound emphasis by CEO Laura Lang on trying to jump-start the sagging magazine business through cross-title sales.
Hartman has already been overseeing Fortune and CNNMoney for the past two years; he now adds responsibility for Time and Money. He’ll report to Todd Larsen, who recently started in the newly created role of evp and group president of news and sports. Each title will still have a top sales executive reporting to Hartman, but not a publisher; the first new such appointment, Money publisher Brendan Ripp, was given the new title of vp of sales for Fortune.
Hartman—who was at a Fortune sales meeting and couldn't be reached for comment—has spent some 11 years at Time Inc., all of it at the Fortune/Money brands. He's not entirely new to the newsweekly category, though, having had a stint as publisher of Dennis Publishing’s The Week. He returned to Time Inc. in 2010 in the group publisher role.
At Fortune, Hartman tried to build on the popularity of the Fortune 500 by blowing it out into a full day of events. In announcing the appointment, Larsen pointed to Fortune's ad growth, expanded conference business and Hartman's role in taking CNNMoney international and launching Fortune's iPad app. Fortune has also been exploring new ways of getting readers to engage with that iPad edition, recently introducing a freemium model.
Hartman also has the happy distinction of heading up one of the few magazines in the building that hasn’t been losing ad pages. Through the first six months of 2012, Fortune’s ad pages rose 4 percent to 654, per Publishers Information Bureau. The same can't be said for Time; ad pages there fell 19 percent to 539 in the first half.
Time Inc. is said to have looked at internal and external candidates to fill the job, which was held by Kim Kelleher until she jumped ship in July for a digital job running Say Media.
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