Hearst Magazines President David Carey's Strategy is Built on an Old New York Times Story

Hearst Magazines chief David Carey is known around here at Media Wire Daily as the magazine launch king with more on the way this year. Financial Times recently did a feature on Mr. Carey where he reveals that his strategy at Hearst was built on a New York Times story about aircraft carriers and whether or not speedboats working in a concerted manner could sink a massive aircraft carrier. Mr. Carey remembers that the answer to that question was yes. Today he sees his company as the massive aircraft carrier and digital media companies like Vice, Buzzfeed, Refinery29 and others as the deadly speedboats. But he isn't too worried about any concerted efforts by those guys to take down his mighty magazine empire because now Hearst shares in their success. How? Well he keeps companies like those from circling his carrier buy investing in all the above and others like Complex Media, AwesomenessTV.

“Our job is to be very mindful of what the speedboats are doing,” he says. “Sometimes we invest in them, sometimes we will try to buy them, sometimes we will partner with them . . . We never take a position of, well, we’re the almost 130-year-old Hearst and they’re a newbie company, and where are they going to be in five years? We have enormous respect for the innovation that they bring to the media business and it’s our job to pay attention. They want to be like us and we want to be like them.”

[FT]

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