Helen McCabe quits as editor-in-chief of the Australian Women’s Weekly after six years
Helen McCabe has resigned as the editor-in-chief of The Australian Women’s Weekly after six years at the helm of the country’s most influential magazine.
McCabe: resigned as Australian Women’s Weekly editor
McCabe joined The Weekly in 2009 from the Sunday Telegraph and refocused the title on harder news which helped the women’s mag land a series of exclusive front covers and stories including last year’s exclusive with Oprah Winfrey.
It also ensured the magazine was regularly in the headlines, notably with a controversial cover of then Prime Minister Julia Gillard knitting a woollen kangaroo.
She is the latest senior figure to depart Bauer Media in recent months with CEO David Goodchild departing unexpectedly last month and sales boss Tony Kendall leaving at the end of last year to join Australian Radio Network as CEO. Neither man has yet been permanently replaced.
Today the publisher also announced it has wound up its distribution company Network Services.
Bauer Media has said McCabe has departed “to pursue other interests”.
McCabe said in a statement: “Thank you to Publisher Matt Dominello, Bauer Media and CEO Yvonne Bauer. Editing The Australian Women’s Weekly is one of the truly great honours in Australian publishing. But after six and a half years it is the right time to move. Thank you to the readers and to all the people who have trusted me to help tell their stories. And finally thank you to the talented AWW team. You are the best.”
Dominello added: “Helen has been a well-respected and important contributor to our business and one of Australia’s longest standing publications. I would like to thank her for her dedication and wish her all the very best for the future.”
In July 2014 McCabe put ultra-marathon bushfire survivor Turia Pitt on the cover, a move she told Mumbrella had done more to market “what the heart and soul of the magazine is” than anything else she had done during her time at the helm of the magazine.
When McCabe took over the title it had a circulation of 493,055 (for the June to January period of 2009. The most recent audit numbers put the titles circulation at 416,117. Numbers for the second half of 2015 are due out in early February.
The Australian is reporting the move is effective as of Friday with the terms of her exit including six months of gardening leave.
At the end of last year McCabe picked up the Editor of the Year for a Consumer/Custom category at the Publish Awards, beating Marie Claire editor Jackie Frank to the title.
Miranda Ward worked for Mumbrella from 2013 to 2017, eventually becoming deputy editor. Miranda joined Mumbrella in September 2013 from Sky News.
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Hmmmmm, did she quit, or was she pushed?
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Farewell Helen,
I enjoyed your political stories and often caught senior males executive telling me information that was only found in the woman’s weekly.
All the best in your next job.
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There was a time when the AWW was one of the great magazines of the world. Changes to its direction in the 1980s almost killed it of. McCabe gave the impression she wanted to recapture the old magic. Sadly she never was game enough to embrace the old successful content and settled for something less. But she did produce something of greater quality than what has been dished up over the past 3 decades.
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The circ and readership declines would have been far more severe without Helen. Bauer is truely an odd animal these days. Rudderless.
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Helen did a fantastic job at AWW when you look at overall quality of content and leadership of the category – but circulation was never going to grow while AWW remained a ‘quality’ title in this space. As we have often seen in the past, Bauer has unrealistic expectations about what can be properly achieved in the magazine space while retaining the ‘quality’ which readers and advertisers value. McCabe made AWW the best it’s been for a long time, and in the days of Kerry Packer that would have been enough for starters, but not for Bauer. There may well be ways to turn AWW circ around but those ways would basically stop it from being AWW. The announcement and ‘gardening leave’ are highly reminiscent of other senior Bauer exits over recent years, where editors and publishers are told “time to go” and given a bonus of varying sorts (payment, ‘editor at large’ title with open brief and light deadlines/expectations, or six months full pay) to go without fuss.
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Good innings in a tough industry
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Congratulations Helen! You did an amazing job.
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Definitely time for a new editor. Wonder who it might be…?
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Plenty of good names already being tossed about, I’d suggest Marina Goh should be high on any list.
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