Former American Media Ed itorial Director Steve Coz has landed at the fast-growing Newsmax Media as editorial director.
The company, which lost out in the bidding for Newsweek last year in part because of its conservative leanings, is among the few media companies that has experienced double-digit growth over the past several years.
Chief Christopher Ruddy said the company hit revenue of $51 million in 2010, up 50 percent from $34 million a year earlier. He wouldn’t disclose actual profits or losses, but said the company has been profitable on an annual basis since 2002, and that it made money again in 2010.
For the past five years Coz has been running Coz Media, a consulting firm that specialized in health marketing. He also served as the manager for German-born marathoner Uta Pippig and is a co-founder of the Take the Magic Step Foundation.
At Newsmax he will be responsible for the online and print publications of Newsmax Media and be based out of its West Palm Beach, Fla., headquarters. Coz headed the National Enquirer, Star, Shape, Men’s Fitness and Natural Health magazines before feuding with AMI CEO David Pecker following the arrival of Bonnie Fuller as editorial director. Coz left in 2003 after 15 years at the company.
During his days at AMI the Harvard-educated editor was named one of the 25 most influential Americans by Time magazine for spearheading the Enquirer’s coverage of the O.J. Simpson murder trial in the mid-1990s, when it was billed as the unofficial paper of record of the proceedings.
At Newsmax, Ruddy said he is deliberately aiming for the audience that most people eschew — the 60-plus age bracket.
He said while projections call for the overall US population to expand by 8 percent over the next 10 years, the 60-plus age group will grow by 50 percent in the same period.
“In the next 10 years, they will dominate the US economy,” predicted Ruddy. “They have disposable income — and they read,” he said.
The company’s publications are right-leaning, but, he insisted, not hard right. “We have always steered a moderate Republican course and we have a Republican-leaning audience,” said Ruddy.
He was a staunch opponent of President Clinton and wrote the conspiracy-minded book “The Strange Death of Vincent Foster,” but said he has since come to regard many of the policies of the Clinton presidency favorably.
He was also among the early conservative critics of George W. Bush’s intervention in Iraq. In the current political debate, Ruddy said, “I think the Tea Party movement is generally positive, but there are excesses.”
Most of the company’s revenue comes from the nation’s heartland, through subscriptions to newsletters like Blaylock Wellness Report (70,000 subscribers at $50 a year) and Financial Intelligence Report (100,000 subscribers at $99 a year). It also runs the Moneynews.com Web site.
Overall, he said, 60 percent of income is derived from subscriptions and 40 percent from advertising, primarily in its flagship monthly magazine, Newsmax, headed by Ken Chandler, a former editor-in-chief and publisher of the New York Post who was also an editor of the Boston Herald.
Chandler is in the midst of scouting for new digs in New York City now that the magazine’s eight-person bureau has outgrown its current space near Grand Central Station.
Time talk
The first-time address yesterday by Time Inc. CEO Jack Griffin to all 400 top executives and managers didn’t yield many surprises, especially when the assembly was told not to talk about it outside the building and to keep the discussion off the record.
Of course, as Griffin has learned, that’s impossible.
The meeting, in the eighth floor auditorium of the Time & Life Building, did reveal that the number of executive vice presidents in the inner circle — who were introduced during the meeting — is larger than the eight Media Ink first reported.
The figure has swollen to 10 EVPs, with just two — Randall Rothenberg, the chief digital officer, and John Q. Griffin (no relation to Jack Griffin) — coming from outside Time Inc.
Jack Griffin, as was expected, told the group the reorganization was complete and that there would be no other restructuring.
Under questioning by Time Inc. Executive Editor Nancy Gibbs, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes, who last addressed a quarterly meeting in December 2009, told the crowd he hasn’t had anyone ask him lately when he was going to sell the magazine divi sion.
Bewkes said that magazines are an integral part of Time Warner, cre ating content on a variety of plat forms — there’s nothing new to that bromide.