Mamamia.com.au appoints Rebecca Sparrow as deputy editor
Women’s lifestyle and news site mamamia.com.au has announced the appointment of Rebecca Sparrow as deputy editor.
The announcement:
June 20, 2011 –
Mamamia.com.au, the site developed by Mia Freedman that has become the ultimate online dinner party for clever, curious Australian women, today announced a new member of its growing editorial team.
Joining Managing Editor Lana Hirschowitz and News Editor Rick Morton will be Deputy Editor Rebecca Sparrow.
For the past 20 years, Sparrow has been a successful travel writer, television publicist, marketing executive, magazine editor, TV scriptwriter, newspaper columnist, secret shopper and novelist.
The team will be headed by Publisher Mia Freedman. Freedman’s career kicked off in 1996 when she became the youngest ever Editor of Australian Cosmopolitan magazine, where she championed the cause of body image.
After becoming the Editor-in-Chief of Cosmopolitan, Cleo and Dolly she left magazines in 2007 to launch Mamamia.com.au, join and chair the National Body Image Advisory Group and write the best selling, Mamamia: A Memoir of Mistakes, Magazines & Motherhood which was released in 2009.
Mamamia now has 250,000 unique visitors, 3 million page impressions and a social media army of more than 55,000 passionate readers who talk, listen and engage.
“Mamamia has grown 400 per cent in traffic in the past 12 months, and we now have almost 100 contributors and columnists. Our editorial team is designed to help curate the day’s most interesting news for our readers to provide the best online experience possible for women,” said Mamamia Publisher, Mia Freedman.
Source: Mamamia press release
Bec is fantastic and will add some great writing depth – no idea how Rick & Mia manage to get so much out. Also good to see an Aussie website (that isn’t a mummy blog) doing so well!
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I don’t know of Rebecca Sparrow but so long as MamaMia continues to provide the kind of entertaining, intelligent and positive material that draw me in again and again I’ll be happy.
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Not keen on the new site. It looks unfocused, and like it’s trying to compete with the major online newspapers.
I think what Mamamia did best was the women/blog style – it was niche, unique.
Our company has decided not to work with them this year, because we think the new site won’t attract the strong female readershiop it used to.
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Hi Suse,
I’m hesitant to approve your comment because I’m suspicious that you’re actually a competitor to Mamamia – but feel free to prove otherwise. But I reckon that anybody who look at Mamamia’s website will form their own views. For what it’s worth, I’d recommend that your company gets the advice of a media agency before you make such a big decision on what seems like a somewhat ill-supported hunch.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
Was Mamamia the result of Mia Freedman’s partnership with Droga5? Or was that just a short term thing in between?
http://www.campaignbrief.com/2.....ith-d.html
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I think its a pretty busy environment but I imagine it will perform well in search given the breadth of content on the home page. The site seems to be attracting advertisers at any rate. Full disclosure, I am a competitive publisher 🙂
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Woah! What did I say to deserve that – have an opinion contrary to yours?
Not a competitor by any stretch of the imagination! In fact, a campaign producer for one of the country’s largest companies. Happy to explain more offline.
And my email is correct – we did not advertise this year, on the advice of our media agency, as we have concerns about the new site and would prefer to deal with the more focused, female-oriented site of old – we feel it has lost a bit of the personalized edge it once had.
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Hi Suse
I’m the CEO of Mamamia, and if you wouldn’t mind I’d hugely value a quick conversation offline to understand yours and your agencies concerns.
While we might not be able to change your mind, we’d surely love to understand the decision process to assess whether it warrants us making any changes.
I totally understand if you’re not in a position to do that, but it would be negligent of me not to reach out in case you can – you can get me on 02 9299-9555.
By the way since we went live with the new format in early April, our traffic has nearly doubled, and our engagement levels still remain at 15-18 pages per UB/month, and our last in depth survey (1800 readers) that I’d happy to go through with you showed our female readership at 98%.
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