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Sanford and the Electoral Effect of Sex Scandals

Tuesday night's special election in South Carolina's First Congressional District was won by the Republican Mark Sanford, the former South Carolina governor whose political career was imperiled in 2009 after he disclosed an extramarital affair.

As we almost always say about special elections, the race probably does not tell us very much about the national political landscape. However, it does give us another data point on how voters react to sex scandals.

It would be wrong to conclude that voters did not punish Mr. Sanford at all for his extramarital affair. In fact, a reasonable number of voters did appear to hold it against him. Last November, Mitt Romney won South Carolina's First District by 18 percentage points. Since Mr. Romney lost the election to Barack Obama by roughly four percentage points nationwide, that means the First District is about 22 percentage points more Republican than the country as a whole.

Mr. Sanford defeated his Democratic opponent, Elizabeth Colbert Busch, by nine percentage points instead â€" so one quick-and-dirty estimate is that Mr. Sanford's personal history cost him a net of 13 percentage points. It just was not enough to flip the election result in such a conservative district.

As it happens, this 13-percentage-point penalty almost exactly matches an academic analysis on how much voters hold sex scandals against candidates. A 2011 paper by Nicholas Chad Long of St. Edward's University, which examined United States senators running for re-election from 1974 to 2008, estimated that scandals involving immoral behavior lowered the share of the vote going to the incumbent by 6.5 percentage points.

Since reducing the incumbent's vote share necessarily increases the challenger's vote share, that means the net effect on the margin between the candidates is twice that amount, or 13 percentage points â€" just as we estimated it might have been for Mr. Sanford.

This close match is a coincidence at least in part, of course. Mr. Long's estimate reflects an average over all sex scandals in his database, but not all scandals are created equal. Mr. Sanford's, for instance, arguably involved not only infidelity but also dereliction of duty, since he was absent from South Carolina for several days in 2009 while visiting his mistress in Argentina.

Another complication is that, other things being equal, a former governor like Mr. Sanford is overqualified to run for a House seat. Other things certainly were not equal in this case, of course â€" but the scandal did not rob Mr. Sanford of his political moxie.

All those qualifications aside, Mr. Long's research would have provided a pretty good benchmark for this race â€" a much better one than the polls did. (I cautioned on Twitter on Tuesday afternoon that the polling is often fairly poor in House races â€" and suggested that Mr. Sanford should probably be considered the favorite because the First Congressional District votes so strongly Republican as a default.)

Public Policy Polling had Mr. Sanford only one percentage point ahead in a poll earlier this week â€" and they had Ms. Colbert Busch up by nine percentage points in a poll two weeks ago. Voters in South Carolina may not like sex scandals â€" but they appear to like Democrats even less.



AOL Says Ad Revenue Helped First-Quarter Earnings

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A Double Dose of Harry Potter Planned for Universal Theme Parks

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Bill Cheng\'s Novel is ‘Southern Cross the Dog\'

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A Bid to Thwart Los Angeles Times Sale to Kochs

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Daily News Lays Off About 12 Opinion Writers and Reporters

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Politico to Test a Pay Model With Some Readers

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Advertising: Now the TV Heavyweights Have Their Week to Unveil Shows

Now the TV Heavyweights Have Their Week

IMAGINE that a heavyweight championship fight was preceded by three months of preliminary bouts. Wouldn't everyone be punchy by the time the big event arrived?

Samantha Isler and Sean Hayes in "Sean Saves the World," one of five new series to be introduced to advertisers by NBC.

Online Video Woos Madison Avenue Close Video See More Videos '

Greg Kinnear in the new Fox drama “Rake,” one of its nine new series.

So it seems on Madison Avenue as advertisers and agencies prepare for the annual television upfront week, to take place in New York next week from Monday through Thursday. The largest broadcast networks and cable channels - English-language and Spanish-language, from ABC to Univision - will show their programming for the 2013-14 season in 18 or so slick, expensive presentations in places like the New Amsterdam Theater, Carnegie Hall and Radio City Music Hall.

The upfront week arrives after 12 weeks of presentations by other cable channels and digital media companies, so plentiful at times that agencies and advertisers could attend three in a single day.

The Great Upfront Frenzy of 2013 - possibly the best thing to happen to the cater-waiter industry since the invention of the reversible cummerbund - began in early February and did not end until Thursday morning, when executives at the Ovation cable channel told reporters about their channel's coming season.

“We knew this was the last week before the upfront week,” said Liz Janneman, executive vice president for advertising sales at Ovation. “We wanted to try to get some attention, and make some noise, by not being in the middle of all that.”

Ovation is adopting a new logo along with a new brand identity, “Art everywhere,” which replaces “Be moved.” The executives also described their intent to increase the amount of original programming on Ovation to 236 hours this year from 46 in 2012.

“We are doubling, tripling, quadrupling down on” additional content for viewers, said Robert Weiss, chief creative officer at Ovation, who discussed 25 new series that are being added to the lineup for 2013-14 or are on a path of “fast-track development.”

That has been perhaps the most notable trend of the preupfront upfront weeks: cable channels bolstering original offerings.

Among others saying that is the strategy are A&E, ABC Family, AMC, BBC America, Bravo, FX, the Hallmark Channel, History, Lifetime, Oxygen, TBS, TNT and USA.

In addition to ABC and Univision, those scheduled to make upfront week appearances include Adult Swim, CBS, CW, Discovery U.S. Hispanic, ESPN, ESPN Deportes, Fox, Fox Hispanic Media, NBC, NuvoTV, TBS, Telemundo, TNT, Tr3s and USA.

Some are not waiting until next week to make like TV Guide and provide programming information. Fox, part of News Corporation, announced on Wednesday that it would add nine series - four dramas and five comedies - to its schedule, including shows like “Almost Human,” with Michael Ealy and Karl Urban; “Rake,” with Greg Kinnear; and “Us & Them,” with Alexis Bledel and Jason Ritter.

NBC, part of the NBCUniversal division of Comcast, followed on Thursday with word of five new shows - three sitcoms and two dramas - among them “Sean Saves the World,” with Sean Hayes, and “Crisis,” with Gillian Anderson.

After the upfront week ends, networks and channels begin negotiating with advertisers and agencies over the sale of commercial time ahead of the fall. (That explains the term “upfront,” in that the dickering occurs before the new season.) Last year, in the upfront market before the start of the 2012-13 season, marketers agreed to buy an estimated $20 billion worth of commercial time.

There has been speculation that if the television industry seeks to raise ad rates for 2013-14 considerably higher than they have been for 2012-13, Madison Avenue may balk, citing recent erosion in viewership and ratings as well as a current schedule bereft of hit new series.

In a report, Brian Wieser, an analyst at the Pivotal Research Group, said he believed that any percentage increases won by the leading broadcast networks would end up in a range of 5 to 7 percent, with percentage gains for the leading cable channels “in or slightly below this range.”

Another challenge for channels and networks is a concerted effort by online video publishers to encourage agencies and advertisers to buy commercial time on Web sites to supplement or complement the TV spots they buy. There were 17 presentations with that goal during an event last week in New York called the Digital Content NewFronts, with participants that included AOL, Google, Hulu and Yahoo.

Senior executives of leading Madison Avenue media agencies like Carat, Digitas, OMD and Universal McCann, sent an open letter on Wednesday described as a “call to arms” to the publishers that presented at the NewFronts. The executives said they were eager to “put equitable skin in the game” but sought assurances that the publishers would agree to major commitments like giving online video programs “the promotion they need and deserve” and providing effective ways to measure results.

Randall Rothenberg, president and chief executive of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, which sponsored the NewFronts, replied on Thursday. He pledged in a letter of his own “to collaborate with you” and asked in turn that the media agencies agree to steps like helping to develop “seamless” viewing across all screens and to “limit the use of advertising to support the piracy of intellectual property.”

Mr. Rothenberg also invited the media agencies to meet with his association to talk about joining forces to start a “Digital Video Center of Excellence,” which would encourage demand for original online video programming. “We'll gladly buy the pizza and beer,” he wrote.

On that note, for those who may be sad at the prospect of Upfront Nation disbanding after Thursday, TBS, part of the Turner Broadcasting System unit of Time Warner, sent invitations to an event next Friday billed as an “upfront hangover brunch.”

A version of this article appeared in print on May 10, 2013, on page B8 of the New York edition with the headline: Now the TV Heavyweights Have Their Week.

NBC Announces 5 New Shows, With Familiar Names Attached

NBC Announces 5 New Shows, With Familiar Names Attached

NBC began its latest rebuilding effort on Thursday by announcing that it had ordered five new series: three comedies and two dramas. These shows do not represent the network’s entire list of new entries; more series are expected to be announced on Friday.

Also, as expected, the network said it had ordered another season of the comedy “Parks and Recreation,” starring Amy Poehler. And two comedies â€" “Whitney” and “1600 Penn” â€" were canceled.

With its roster of new shows, the network will be bringing back some familiar stars like Sean Hayes (“Will and Grace”), J.K. Simmons (“Law & Order”) and David Walton (“Bent”), as well as Jason Katims, the creator of one of its top dramas, “Parenthood.”

Mr. Hayes will star in “Sean Saves the World,” a comedy about a gay father whose world changes when his teenage daughter moves in and he throws himself into parenthood.

Mr. Simmons, who is most familiar from drama (memorably as a neo-Nazi in the prison series “Oz” on HBO), will play a quirky dad as well in a comedy, “The Family Guide” â€" but he happens to be blind. He participates fully in raising his children, along with his former wife, Parker Posey (“Louie”), who happens to smoke a pipe.

The third comedy is “About a Boy,” based on the Nick Hornby novel and Hugh Grant film, and created by Mr. Katims. Mr. Walton stars as Will, the man-child who wrote one hit song and lives off the fat of the world until his neighbor (Minnie Driver) moves in next door with her 11-year-old son. The boy adopts Will as a surrogate father â€" and Will realizes that the single dad thing works well with the ladies.

One new drama, “Crisis,” seems, on paper anyway, more like the premise for a movie. Elite youngsters from top Washington families (including the president’s son) are kidnapped and used as pawns in a conspiracy. The stars include Dermot Mulroney (“My Best Friend’s Wedding”) and Gillian Anderson (“The X-Files.”)

The other new drama, “Believe,” is notable for being yet another production of J.J. Abrams (“Lost”) with a sci-fi theme. An orphan girl, 10 years old, has powers of telekinesis and levitation, and even the ability to control nature. Her protectors, known as the True Believers, turn, for some reason, to a death-row inmate to save her from the corrupt forces trying to use her for nefarious ends. Alfredo Cuarón, director of “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” is the executive producer.



Randy Jackson to Leave ‘American Idol’

Randy Jackson to Leave ‘American Idol’

Randy Jackson, the longest-serving name associated with “American Idol,” has announced his intention to leave the show at the end of this season. News of his impending departure comes as reports swirl that the Fox network has decided to clean house on its onetime prime-time powerhouse by removing all its on-air judges and its executive producer.

Mr. Jackson, who has been a judge on the show for 12 years, gave that news to the E entertainment channel on Thursday, hours after the Web site The Wrap posted a story saying that all the show’s judges, including Mr. Jackson and the singers Nicky Minaj, Mariah Carey and Keith Urban, would not be asked back for another season.

The E channel quoted Mr. Jackson saying “Yo! Yo! Yo! To put all of the speculation to the rest, after 12 years of judging on ‘American Idol’ I have decided it is time to leave after this season.”

Earlier, the E channel posted an interview with Ms. Minaj in which she did not respond directly the question of whether she wanted to come back for another season but described her experience on the show as positive. E also reported that it had confirmed the news from The Wrap with a representative from the network.

Ratings for “Idol” have plummeted over the last two seasons, to a point where it is now usually behind the NBC singing competition “The Voice” in the weekly ratings.

Fox executives have so far declined to comment.



YouTube’s Pay Channels Include ‘Sesame Street’ and Mixed Martial Arts

YouTube’s Pay Channels Include ‘Sesame Street’ and Mixed Martial Arts

YouTube on Thursday detailed its plan to let producers sell paid subscriptions to their videos, creating a prominent new marketplace for programming on the Internet.

The sprawling video Web site, a unit of Google, said the first paid video channels would come online Thursday afternoon, with subscription rates ranging from 99 cents to $7.99 a month. The early participants include Sesame Workshop, the producer of “Sesame Street,” which will stream full episodes of the children’s show to paying subscribers; Ultimate Fighting Championship, the mixed martial arts league, which will stream classic fights to fans; and The Young Turks, a progressive talk show.

YouTube identified about 30 of these partners on Thursday and said other video makers would soon be able to set up their own paid channels, using YouTube’s infrastructure. In a conference call for reporters, Malik Ducard, the director of content partnerships for YouTube, suggested that this “self-service feature” was the most important piece of the announcement.

“As we roll out wider and as we roll out self-serve, you’ll see a lot of innovation,” he said, predicting that homegrown YouTube stars with fan followings would choose to set up paid channels. YouTube’s plans for paid channels were widely reported earlier this week, but the names of the participants were unknown then.

For YouTube, the paid channel plan gives the creators of videosâ€" some of whom have been dissatisfied with the payments from the advertisements attached to their videos â€" a new way to profit from their popularity. The plan also gives YouTube a new source of revenue, although there are widespread doubts about whether people will be willing to pay for channels.



Politico to Test a Pay Wall With Some Readers of Its Site

Politico to Test a Pay Wall With Some Readers of Its Site

Politico, the media organization that covers Washington in minute detail, said Thursday that it would start experimenting with a pay wall on its Web site.

“Starting this week, we are going to test a metered system for subscriptions in a half-dozen states and internationally,” the leaders of the organization told their staff in a memo that was also posted online and signed by John F. Harris, the editor in chief, Jim VandeHei, the executive editor, and Kim Kingsley, the chief operations officer.

The letter emphasized that though the change was “small” and “experimental,” it “represents a shift in our thinking.” Notably, however, the site will not be testing a pay wall in Washington, the home of Politico’s core readers.

“It’s something we do not have to do but want to do to get a better feel for readers’ willingness to pay for our journalism,” the letter explained. “We believe that every successful media company will ultimately charge for its content.”

Until now, Politico has thrived by being endlessly available for those obsessed enough to want to be updated by every tic in the body politic. But while Politico started as a Web site, it has evolved to deliver a print version with advertising and a premium service for subscribers. The question now is how hardcore Internet fans of the site will feel about joining the group that pays.

Politico said it was testing the waters now, ahead of what they had planned only a few months earlier, because of the success of pay walls at other news organizations. Pay walls, once considered anathema to online journalism, are now being embraced by more newspapers and even smaller operations like The Dish blog, run by Andrew Sullivan, as revenue from Web advertising continues to sputter.

“It is increasingly clear that readers are more willing than we once thought to pay for content they value and enjoy,” the Politico memo said.

Politico said that it was testing the wall in smaller states spread across the country and at different price for at least six months and then would study the results.



Politico to Test a Pay Wall With Some Readers of Its Site

Politico to Test a Pay Wall With Some Readers of Its Site

Politico, the media organization that covers Washington in minute detail, said Thursday that it would start experimenting with a pay wall on its Web site.

“Starting this week, we are going to test a metered system for subscriptions in a half-dozen states and internationally,” the leaders of the organization told their staff in a memo that was also posted online and signed by John F. Harris, the editor in chief, Jim VandeHei, the executive editor, and Kim Kingsley, the chief operations officer.

The letter emphasized that though the change was “small” and “experimental,” it “represents a shift in our thinking.” Notably, however, the site will not be testing a pay wall in Washington, the home of Politico’s core readers.

“It’s something we do not have to do but want to do to get a better feel for readers’ willingness to pay for our journalism,” the letter explained. “We believe that every successful media company will ultimately charge for its content.”

Until now, Politico has thrived by being endlessly available for those obsessed enough to want to be updated by every tic in the body politic. But while Politico started as a Web site, it has evolved to deliver a print version with advertising and a premium service for subscribers. The question now is how hardcore Internet fans of the site will feel about joining the group that pays.

Politico said it was testing the waters now, ahead of what they had planned only a few months earlier, because of the success of pay walls at other news organizations. Pay walls, once considered anathema to online journalism, are now being embraced by more newspapers and even smaller operations like The Dish blog, run by Andrew Sullivan, as revenue from Web advertising continues to sputter.

“It is increasingly clear that readers are more willing than we once thought to pay for content they value and enjoy,” the Politico memo said.

Politico said that it was testing the wall in smaller states spread across the country and at different price for at least six months and then would study the results.



Top Editors Abruptly Leave Village Voice

Top Editors Abruptly Leave Village Voice

Will Bourne, who became editor in chief of The Village Voice in November, and Jessica Lustig, the deputy editor since January, are leaving the weekly publication.

They met with the staff at 11 p.m. on Thursday and said that Christine Brennan, executive editor of Voice Media Group, had instructed them to cut five positions from the 20-person staff. Rather than carrying out the cuts, they resigned and left immediately.

The tumult at The Village Voice has been something of a pattern as the weekly and its ownership have struggled to come to grips with declining revenue and increased competition for readers and advertisers on the Web.

“We are both leaving because I was summoned to a meeting and asked to get rid of five people and we are on a short string already,” said Mr. Bourne, who had worked at Fast Company and Inc. magazine before coming to the Voice. “When I was brought in here, I was explicitly told that the bloodletting had come to an end. I have enormous respect for the staff here and the work they have been doing and I am not going to preside over further layoffs.”

Ms. Lustig said she was leaving at the same time - the weekly is in the middle of closing its issue for Monday -- because she shared Mr. Bourne’s belief that that the paper could not absorb further cuts.

After running into controversy for Backpage.com, a classified site that has hosted escort ads, the newspaper chain of 13 weeklies was separated from the classified service and sold to a group of the company’s editors and publishers last September. The Village Voice, founded in 1955 by Norman Mailer, along with others, has won three Pulitzer prizes and published the work of Henry Miller, Tom Stoppard and Nat Hentoff.



Fox Offers an Early Glimpse of Its New Season

Fox Offers an Early Glimpse of Its New Season

The Fox network Wednesday night got a jump on next week’s announcements of new fall television shows by releasing the details of the four new dramas and five new comedies it has ordered for the next television season.

Fox is picking up an unusually high number of new shows, partly because it has seen its momentum in prime time slacken over the past two years as its longtime bellwether show, “American Idol,” has suffered ratings declines.

So Fox is turning to some prominent television creators, including J.J. Abrams (“Lost”), Michael Schur (“Parks and Recreation”), Bill Lawrence (“Scrubs”) and Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci ( the “Transformer” movies) for its new roster of shows.

New stars for Fox include Andy Samberg, Andre Braugher, Greg Kinnear, Seth Green, Alexis Blendel, and Terry O’Quinn.

Mr. Samberg, the former “Saturday Night Live” star, will headline a new comedy with Mr. Braugher (“Homicide”) called “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” set in a police precinct and created by Mr. Schur and his “Parks” partner Dan Goor.

Another comedy, “Dads,” stars Mr. Green, along with Giovanni Ribisi, as single guys whose lives are upended when their dads, Martin Mull and Peter Riegert, move in. Seth MacFarlane of “Family Guy” is one of the creators.

“Us and Them” is an American adaptation of the British comedy hit “Gavin and Stacey” and stars Ms. Blendel (“Gilmore Girls”) and Jason Ritter (“Parenthood”) as a couple trying to survive their chaotic friends and family.

“Surviving Jack” is a new comedy from Mr. Lawrence, and it stars Christopher Meloni (“Law & Order SVU”) as a dad trying to raise a son in the 1990’s.

The last new comedy is “Enlisted” which follows three brothers on a small Army base in Florida.

Fox managed to add one new successful drama this season in “The Following” but it has holes to fill and four new hour-long entries to try to fill them.

Mr. Kinnear will star in a series called “Rake,” an adaptation of an Australian series about a gifted criminal defense lawyer with a self-destructive private life. Peter Tolan (“Rescue Me”) is one of the creators.

The new drama from the prolific Mr. Abrams is “Almost Human,” about police work 35 years in the future when cops are paired with lifelike androids, one of whom, a female, seems to have an emotional connection to her partner, who hates robots.

“Gang Related” is another crime drama, but a contemporary one, set in the world of a Los Angeles gang task force.

Maybe the most intriguing new Fox drama is “Sleepy Hollow,” which is a contemporary reworking of the Washington Irving story, with Ichabod Crane brought back to life to help solve a centuries-old mystery that threatens the future of humanity. It was created by Mr. Kurtzman and Mr. Orci.

Fox will announce its complete new schedule next Monday.



Media Decoder: AT&T’s Ads With Cute Kids Are a Neat Fit for Mother’s Day

AT&T’s Ads With Cute Kids Are a Neat Fit for Mother’s Day

The popular campaign for AT&T featuring commercials with interviews of cute schoolchildren in the style of “Kids Say the Darnedest Things” is being expanded to help children, of whatever age, celebrate Mother’s Day on Sunday.

Children are cute in a special commercial for Mother's Day from AT&T that can be turned into a video card.

AT&T is offering consumers â€" regardless of which carrier they use â€" a chance to visit a microsite, or special Web site, to send personalized video cards to their mothers for Mother’s Day. The video clip that will be part of the greeting also forms the basis for the newest commercial in AT&T’s series of cute-children spots.

The new commercial, which is to begin running on television on Friday, plays down any pitching for AT&T. The company’s logo is there, though, and the spot uses the theme of the current campaign, “It’s not complicated.”

And, it ought to be noted, Mother’s Day is typically the busiest day of the year each year for phoning, sending texts and other telecommunicating.

But the new commercial eschews overt selling in favor of a general greeting to mothers. The commercial presents Beck Bennett, the comedian who interviews the children in each spot, asking, “What’s better, a big hug or a small hug?” (Big, natch.)

And when he asks, “Who gives the best hugs?” the response is unanimous: “Mom.”

An announcer comes on at the end to declare: “It’s not complicated. Moms are the best. Happy Mother’s Day from AT&T.”

The AT&T part is missing from the version that can be personalized on the microsite, ATTmothersday.com, which is being billed as the “AT&T Mother’s Day Card Maker.” (There are AT&T brand logos, lest one forget the sponsor.)

The video cards, which can be sent via Facebook, Twitter or e-mail, will end with the words “To the best mom ever” and be signed, “Love,” followed by the given names provided by users.

AT&T will also promote the video card in social media like Facebook and YouTube.

The Mother’s Day commercial is the second time since the campaign began in November that a special spot based on a calendar event is being produced. For the N.C.A.A. tournament, AT&T and its advertising agency, BBDO Atlanta, brought out a commercial in which Mr. Bennett bantered with professional basketball legends.

That raises a question: How many times can AT&T and BBDO Atlanta go to the well before it runs dry?

“We look at that very carefully,” said David Christopher, chief marketing officer at the AT&T Mobility unit of AT&T in Atlanta.

“We measure this campaign, and every campaign, every which way to Sunday,” he added, “measuring wear-out and sentiment.” So far, the campaign is still a hit, Mr. Christopher said, and still being welcomed by consumers.

Stephen McMennamy, a creative director at BBDO Atlanta â€" part of the BBDO Worldwide division of the Omnicom Group â€" said the goal was to reserve special spots “for special moments,” adding, “We by no means want to be greedy about it.”

“You can overdo something like this,” Mr. McMennamy acknowledged. To that end, the run of the commercial on television is being limited to three days, Friday through Sunday, rather than a longer period.

What about Father’s Day?

“We haven’t talked about that yet,” Mr. McMennamy replied. “I feel like once Dad sees this, there might be a tear.”

AT&T is among scores of marketers coming out with special campaigns for Mother’s Day. There are far fewer ad agencies doing so, with a notable exception: the agency known as Mother, which is based in London and has offices in New York and Buenos Aires.

Each year, staff members in London and New York create projects for Mother’s Day. The 2013 effort from Mother New York is centered on a microsite, themomtract.com, offering a mock contract that rewards a mother for her child-raising.



Hearst Hires Troy Young as Digital Media Chief

Hearst Hires Digital Chief To Oversee Web Brands

Hearst Magazines, the publisher of such venerable titles as Esquire and Cosmopolitan, said on Wednesday that it was creating a new position, president of digital media.

Troy Young

The job will go to Troy Young, 45, who will be responsible for content, revenue production and development strategies for Hearst Magazines’ 26 online properties, which include Cosmopolitan.com, Elle.com and RealBeauty.com. The job’s purview extends only to magazines’ online brands, not to their print editions.

Mr. Young has not been employed in traditional media since the 1990s, when he worked for Canadian television. He has spent the last 20 years of his career in what is known as the “pure play” digital-only space.

Mr. Young comes most recently from Say Media, an integrated digital media company that builds its own online brands around themes (like ReadWrite, a technology Web site) or charismatic editors (like xoJane, edited by Jane Pratt, the founding editor of Sassy magazine) and then helps advertisers build branded content for those properties.

Before his time at Say, Mr. Young was chief experience officer of the Omnicom digital agency Organic, with clients such as American Express, Virgin Mobile and Chrysler.

David Carey, president of Hearst Magazines, said he chose Mr. Young because “Pure plays are increasingly the companies to watch in terms of how quickly they produce product, the orthodoxies they set aside and how they assemble their talent.”

“We want the pulse of a pure play,” he added.

Mr. Young said he had always worked “at the intersection of strategy and content,” which was particularly useful for what he described as a coming era where advertiser content would blend “seamlessly” with editorial content.

“We are seeing an integration of the advertisers and the content in native advertising,” he said, “and this is not going away.”

A version of this article appeared in print on May 9, 2013, on page B6 of the New York edition with the headline: Hearst Hires Digital Chief To Oversee Web Brands.