NatMags’ Hearst Digital – so often an online latecomer – is supposedly following IPC and Emap/Bauer by absorbing some of its magazines’ websites in to a single portal. Hearst will kill the sites for the Good Housekeeping, Country Living, House Beautiful and Coast mags, moving content to Allaboutyou.com, NMA says. That site, acquired when Hearst bought Handbag.com from The Telegraph in 2006, is currently set aside for She magazine but would be relaunched again as a super-portal for the mags in March. Now articles about sheep, waves, cushions and mantelpieces will rub shoulders with beauty tips, fashion and celebrity diets… one has to feel a certain pang of regret for the rural wives of Country Living. And a confusion that Hearst doesn’t use Handbag.com as the funnel for all its young-woman content (Company magazine publisher Sara Stephenson was today named publisher for both Handbag.com and Allaboutyou.com).
An interview with Chris Johnson, VP, Hearst Digital is on our sister site paidContent.org
Late last year, NatMags announced Hearst Digital would focus only on the online-exclusive brands Handbag.com, GetLippy.com, Netdoctor and Allaboutyou.com while a separate division would jointly manage any continuing websites for magazine brands. Now, however, it’s said Cosmopolitan’s website will continue, but just Hearst Digital’s oversight. Staff for Baby Expert, Harper’s Bazaar, Prima, You & Your Wedding and Men’s Health revert back to their respective print teams, NMA says.