Hearst, which looked north to Canada to find the new editor of Good Housekeeping, will show off the new hire to nervous staffers on Wednesday.
Jane Francisco, who was editing women’s lifestyle magazine Chatelaine, is going to show up at the Hearst Tower for the first meet-and-greet with staffers.
In a surprise move, she was named to the post on Monday, replacing Rosemary Ellis, although she is not scheduled to relocate from Toronto until early next year.
Ellis is slated to leave on Dec. 2, after getting the February issue out the door.
Good Housekeeping was once the second-most profitable magazine in the Hearst empire behind Cosmopolitan — but like many titles in the women’s service category, it has not had an easy time of late despite Ellis’s push to make it a multi-platform vehicle.
It is still profitable, but it probably fell down to fourth place in the Hearst stable. Ad pages through November were off 7.3 percent although single-copy sales were up 5 percent in the six-month period ending June 30.