Lexis Nexis offloads HR Leader and Risk magazines to Key Media
Lexis Nexis, the Reed Elsevier-owned publisher, is selling two of its magazines – HR Leader and Risk – to Key Media for an undisclosed sum.
The move shrinks Lexis Nexis’s media portfolio to two magazines – Lawyer’s Weekly and OHS magazine.
Senior staff will shift from Lexis Nexis to Key Media with the titles.
Tyson Wienker, director of strategy & business development at Lexis Nexis Pacific, told Mumbrella: “From our perspective, the transition of HR Leader and Risk magazines to Key Media positions the titles well for future growth. We want to focus our energies on our core audience – the legal community.”
Key Media already publishes an HR title – Human Capital. The B2B and consumer media company also owns Your Money Magazine, Your Investment Property, Your Mortgage and Australian Broker.
In a note to staff obtained by Mumbrella, Lexis Nexis Pacific CEO TJ Viljoen, wrote:
Following extensive strategic evaluation and review, it has been identified that HR Leader and Risk magazines are not closely aligned with LexisNexis future strategic positioning to achieve double digit growth. Key Media, a leading B2B and B2C magazine publisher, has acquired these titles as they are a good fit with their business model and are positioned well for growth.
I would like to advise that the impacted team members will be offered alternate employment with Key Media in a similar capacity and in a market sector positioned for future success of these publications going forward.
I would like to thank the team members of HR Leader and Risk magazines: Sarah O’Carroll, Paul Desmond and Ben Nice for their contribution to the business and wish them well in their new roles.
The media team, now consisting Lawyer’s Weekly and OHS Magazines, will report into Maggie Burke (Manager News & Business) as of next Monday, 20th June. We believe there are substantial similarities between the two business units and many synergies that they will be able to leverage.
This transfer to Key Media will position HR Leader and Risk magazines for future growth given the strong fit with advertising-based revenue models and common core professional audiences.
Key Media was unavailable for comment at presstime.
Industry magazines like these that heavily rely on recruitment dollars (80%+) need to reinvent their advertising business model for a market that now has the option to use goliath jobs boards like Seek and Careerone.
There is a jobs board on http://www.lawyersweekly.com.au/ but not seeing the best use of it.
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I’m deeeply saddened by this news.
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‘I would like to advise that the impacted team members will be offered alternate employment with Key Media in a similar capacity and in a market sector positioned for future success of these publications going forward.’
What the hell is that supposed to mean?
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Having worked on Risk for 5 years from 2005 to April 2010 I am surprised it has taken this long for LN to come to this ultimate conclusion.
LN is well regarded as dominant market leader in the business of law and it makes perfect sense they have decided to focus on their core strengths.
Richard Birrell
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Clint – didn’t you work there?
Richard – Job hunting? Why did you leave?
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Totally my choice to leave after 5 years frankly it was time.
No regrets and I am happy.
Who are you media guru?What is the reason for your questions?
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Rumours on the mill – just curious to be fair!
It appears that they cant hold down a publisher for more than 6months at a time either.
Was wondering why that was and if it had an effect on how the titles performed?
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@MediaGuru – LexisNexis are not publishers in the traditional sense of requiring an advertising model. Most of their business is focused on education for the legal market through software and books. The media department from memory contributes less than 5% (please don’t quote me on that) of their revenue and really feels like a bolt on department to the greater Lexis Nexis. Reed Business Information which is also part of the Reed Elsevier Group would be in a much better place to run LN titles as they understand a fluctuating ad revenue market where the CFO of LN does not.
In short the last 3 publishers were squeezed hard by the CFO and consequently they lost 5 out of 7 ad sales staff within 2 months. Lack of media expertise in senior management is the key problem.
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Clint that’s really interesting – Why do you think they chose to sell the titles externally rather than move/sell the titles to RBI?
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I can only guess. Internal competition I believe is a factor. The distribution has become increasingly concerning to reduce costs. I would be interested to know the last time the titles including Lawyers Weekly were CAB audited and what the fall has been. RBI may be familiar with those concerns and chose not to pursue the titles.
RBI have launched competitive products to LN in the past – The New Lawyer.
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Interesting. I’d heard rumours that RBI were going to drop The New Lawyer. They certainly haven’t been securing any advertising recently so I don’t know how they survive.
I believe that Lawyers Weekly is CAB audited bi-annually still, think I saw the report a couple of months ago.
My sources tell me that they are currently increasing circulation too… heard that before!
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A previous Lawyers Weekly publisher chose not to be CAB audited at one point after culling off half off their free subscription list and instead offered that list a free subscription to an eZine version of the copy. This frustrated many advertisers that didn’t see the same value in advertising in an eZine copy vs a hard copy.
The next CAB audit that was done was kept quiet as the circulation had fallen 50%. I can see now there is a free 12 months subscription offer on the Lawyers Weekly site to fix that shortfall.
There have been plenty of poor decisions within that department and as a result publishers have left. The current Lawyers Weekly title has been kept along with OHS mag as it correlates with the greater company direction to sell to the legal and HR verticals with other products. I feel that these titles need to be viewed as custom content publications used for driving comms like Netregistry and NETT Magazine. I know that the marketing dept of LN views Lawyers Weekly in that light.
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Obviously all figures from CAB were published. Was referring to the latest figures being left out of the LW title and any sales collateral.
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