Fortune appoints Insider’s Alyson Shontell as top editor

Photo: AFP
Photo: AFP

Summary

  • Digital-media veteran plans to focus on increasing business magazine’s online readership and subscriptions

Fortune hired digital-media veteran Alyson Shontell as its next top editor, in a bid to expand the business magazine’s online readership and revenue as its print business fades.

Ms. Shontell, the No. 2 editor of digital publisher Insider Inc., said she has signed a multiyear contract to be editor in chief of Fortune Media Group Holdings Ltd., responsible for all of the company’s content. She will report to Fortune Chief Executive Alan Murray.

Ms. Shontell will succeed Clifton Leaf, who stepped down as Fortune’s editor in chief in May. Her first day will be Oct. 6.

In appointing Ms. Shontell, 35 years old, Fortune aims to give one of the most prestigious names in business news a dose of digital-publishing savvy, Mr. Murray said in an interview. Like most news organizations, Fortune has focused its efforts in recent years on signing up digital subscribers to help pay for its journalism as traditional print advertising dwindles.

The publisher, which launched a digital paywall in 2020, has about 40,000 paying digital subscribers, said Mr. Murray, a former editor at The Wall Street Journal. That is a fraction of the magazine’s 500,000-plus total paid subscriber count, which has shrunk about 30% since 2016, according to data from the Alliance for Audited Media.

Mr. Murray said Fortune expects to turn a profit this year and generate about $100 million of revenue, close to one-third of which will come from digital subscriptions and digital advertising. Print advertising and subscriptions account for close to one-third, as does the company’s conference business, Mr. Murray said.

Ms. Shontell said she sees possibilities to bolster Fortune’s digital business, including striking deals to syndicate Fortune articles outside its paywall on websites such as Yahoo or MSN and launching an e-commerce initiative, which could include reviews, guides and other product-focused articles. She said that increased digital readership could be monetized through additional programmatic, or automated, advertising on the magazine’s website.

Ms. Shontell said Fortune’s growing digital-subscription business was one of the primary reasons she accepted the job. “Media is really hard," she said. “But if digital is a third of the business now, I think that we can grow that even more."

Fortune’s owner, Thai businessman Chatchaval Jiaravanon, has supported Fortune’s digital efforts, Mr. Murray said. Since purchasing the magazine from Meredith Corp. for $150 million in 2018, Mr. Chatchaval has bankrolled its push into China and funded the hiring of additional editors and reporters, and increased Fortune’s total head count by 50% to 219.

Ms. Shontell is joining Fortune amid drawn-out contract negotiations between management and the publication’s union, which wants to remove readership targets from employees’ performance reviews and is pushing for new contract terms that would help diversify the magazine’s staff. The negotiations have caused friction between management and union members, leading to a one-day strike in March and threats to picket a Fortune conference in August, resulting in its postponement. Mr. Murray said he expects to reach a contract deal with Fortune’s union by the end of the year.

Ms. Shontell said she generally supports the concept of including diversity provisions in the union contract, but said she hasn’t yet been included in the negotiations. She said web traffic is only one metric that should be used to gauge performance, adding that different jobs require different ways of measuring success.

“It can be empowering for writers to have that at their fingertips," she said. “Numbers should absolutely guide you, not control your journalism."

Fortune contacted Ms. Shontell about the possibility of joining as the top editor in June, shortly before her maternity leave began. She and Mr. Murray spoke over the phone in the early afternoons when Ms. Shontell’s newborn was asleep, then discussed the job in August over steak salads at Del Frisco’s Grille in Hoboken, N.J., near where Ms. Shontell lives. About a month later, Ms. Shontell signed her contract to join Fortune.

That deal culminated a yearslong recruitment effort by Mr. Murray. He had attempted to hire Ms. Shontell years ago to serve as Fortune’s digital editor, but she demurred, Mr. Murray said.

“She was holding out for the whole thing," he said.

 

This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text

Catch all the Industry News, Banking News and Updates on Live Mint. Download The Mint News App to get Daily Market Updates.
more

MINT SPECIALS

Switch to the Mint app for fast and personalized news - Get App