Condé Nast plans to announce Wednesday that Anna Wintour, editor of Vogue for nearly a quarter-century, will take on the additional role of artistic director for the company, Eric Wilson reports. The move into Condé Nast’s executive ranks ends speculation that Ms. Wintour might leave the company, and it makes her one of the most powerful women in magazine publishing. Ms. Wintour’s new role will assume some of the responsibility from S.I. Newhouse Jr., who has controlled editorial management as Condé Nast’s chairman for more than three decades. Ms. Wintour described the position as “almost like being a one-person consulting firm†for other editors on directing their brands.
At the sprawling South by Southwest Interactive conference, NPR introduced a new campaign called Generation Listen to appeal to younger listeners, Brian Stelter writes. NPR has seen its audience age steadily, like so many of the old-line media companies â€" a typical radio listener is between 48 and 78. The new campaign, which was envisioned by Danielle Deabler, a manager who pitched it for nearly two years, will include direct outreach to young listeners over Twitter and Facebook based around the manifesto “it’s time for us to get better at finding you where you are and what is most relevant to your lives.â€
Five decades of police failures allowed British TV personality Jimmy Savile to escape investigation for a lifetime of sex offenses dating back to the early 1960s, according to a report released Tuesday from a police oversight agency, Stephen Castle writes. Poor police procedures, missed opportunities and an unwillingness t! o pursue one of England’s most-beloved celebrities all contributed. The report indicated that police were first alerted to possible sex crimes by Mr. Savile, who died in 2011, in 1963 â€" the male who brought the charges was told to “forget about it†and “move on,†and no official crime report was made or investigation undertaken. “While we can never right this wrong,†said Theresa May, the home secretary, who is responsible for law enforcement in Britain, “we must learn the lessons to prevent the same from ever happening again.â€
Honest Tea, a bottled tea company that took an unorthodox approach to marketing its beverages, is bringing the same originality to their corporate history by telling it through a comic book, Elizabeth Olson writes. The comic traces Honest Tea’s struggles starting in 1998 to their eventual purchase by Coca-Cola in 2011, when thei annual profits had risen from $1.1 million to $75 million. It is aimed as an inspirational guide for entrepreneurs and will be sold on a Web site along with signed bookplates and T-shirts.
Time Warner’s upcoming spinoff of Time Inc. should make investors and magazine readers wonder whether it is a good-faith effort to establish a stand-alone company or just a convenient way to jettison certain businesses, Steven M. Davidoff writes. The business argument for a spinoff is that it allows the former parent and independent company to be better run, but they can also serve as a convenient dumping ground for unreliable assets. When General Motors and Ford Motors spun off their auto parts companies they larded the new subsidiaries with debt, high labor costs and sweetheart pricing deals that drove the new companies into bankruptcy; Ford! and G.M.! are still dealing with the litigation. Time Inc. will require strong leadership, after its current chief, Laura Lang, departs when the company becomes independent, and substantial resources if it is to succeed.
