WWD’s fashion clout on the West Coast is stumbling with a skeleton crew as the publication’s broader masthead continues to be tweaked and whittled down.
The latest change at the Penske Media Corp.-owned digital daily is the swapping out of Eugenia Richman with Michael Atmore as editor-in-chief. Atmore will retain his existing duties as chief brand officer of Fairchild Media Group and lead sister publication Footwear News’ editorial division. Richman, meanwhile, was named vice president of editorial innovation after less than two years as WWD editor-in-chief.
The shuffle comes amid dwindling search traffic across many publications as artificial intelligence and Google algorithm changes cut into online publishers’ readership.
Atmore’s added duties come as WWD’s West Coast presence remains an afterthought in comparison to the publication’s overseas bureaus and New York headquarters. The most recent layoff was West Coast Executive Editor Booth Moore in February, leaving one reporter to handle an industry that produced $43 billion worth of goods in California alone, according to market research firm Looks for Lease.
The personnel changes come as the publication continues to fill its well of daily online content with bylines pulled from staffers at WWD sister publications, including Footwear News and Sourcing Journal.
In other words, attempting to cover a dynamic multi-billion-dollar industry with less.
Dwindling Brand Equity
Industry readers in Los Angeles have long grumbled at the oversaturation of the European and New York brand coverage. The West Coast has long resonated globally with its own contemporary, streetwear, sportswear, accessories and denim ecosystem stretching from Downtown Los Angeles to the San Gabriel Valley and Orange County.
That online publisher Penske Media Corp. finds it serviceable to staff an entire coast with one bureau underscores either a lack of local market knowledge or just how rough the media business has become.
After all, WWD Los Angeles has been on a collision course since its staff picked up and moved out of Conde Nast’s Wilshire Boulevard offices to Penske Media’s former building on Santa Monica Boulevard (they’ve since moved to the splashy Lumen West office on Olympic Boulevard).
But local readers have lamented it lacks the meat and potatoes reporting of what WWD was under Condé Nast. Instead of stories with teeth, the outlet is hand-fed press releases on celebrity collaborations and attends fêtes that hold little relevance to locals.
The outlet should have been first to get the scoop on the crumbling of Ron Herman and Fred Segal. Instead, it waited until the last of the doors to close before hopping on the news. More recently, it missed out on scooping others on the eventual opening of H&M on Beverly Drive in & Other Stories’ former space.
California Fashion Media Landscape
One can’t fault the lone reporter left on the West Coast for the coverage misses. The blame sits at the top of the food chain with Penske Media acting more like a brand management firm taking legacy titles and pumping as much out of them for as little as possible until there’s no more brand equity to squeeze out and sell to advertisers, event sponsors and, most important, industry readers.
The continued contraction comes as New York Post parent News Corp. looks to make inroads in California with The California Post set to launch next year.
It’ll have a dedicated staff and, while not a fashion trade, it will no doubt reach into retail and apparel with its sometimes hysterical approach to coverage.
With no real diversity in the California or Los Angeles fashion media landscape, the Post could very well pick at the bones of what readers are left in an incredibly fractured space.
There’s also WWD’s direct competition in Business of Fashion, which has also made the choice to invest so little in the West Coast, they might as well not even bother trying to have a readership locally.
Puck News gets scoops and offers some opinion, but simply repeats what WWD and Business of Fashion get wrong about covering the West Coast fashion industry. That is, covering European and New York fashion brands as if Los Angeles and Orange County designers are salivating to know only news outside of their own backyards.
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