• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, Yesterday

It’s that time of year again—time for the annual wrap-up on Hearst from Steven R. Swartz, president & chief executive officer of the company.

Hearst had a decent year overall, achieving revenue growth despite a possible letdown after 2024, which saw both the election and the Olympics. The newspaper and magazine divisions posted gains. But they still face certain headwinds. Take the magazine business.  

“We often have asked ourselves over the years which is the most challenging business we are in and right now that would be the magazine business," Swartz writes. "Lacking the hard news that regularly brings readers to our newspaper and local TV news sites, magazines have benefitted from search traffic for most of their digital transition. The onset of generative AI and the primacy of social media are reshaping how audiences discover and consume content and thus also changing how we produce it.”

To advance on this front, Hearst is making  “a significant investment in our magazine company this year to aggressively exploit what we have going for us above all others: great brands and journalists covering subjects readers and viewers are super passionate about, such as food, fashion, cars, home and health,” Swartz says. 

He continues, “We’ll use all the digital tools in our tool kit to daily connect our experts and their content with our audience. This means more Instagram and TikTok videos from our staffers, more daily newsletters from our editors and writers, and more podcasts and YouTube videos."

All this will be found at “revamped versions of our web and mobile sites and on your favorite social platforms,” Swartz adds. “And yes, you’ll still be able to get this great content in printed form, something we’ve excelled at for more than 100 years."

On the newspaper front, Hearst benefitted from the acquisition of two Texas newspapers: Austin American-Statesman and The Dallas Morning News. (Readers may recall that for the latter purchase, Hearst faced heated competition from Alden Global Capital, and had to raise its bid twice.) 

Hearst didn’t complete any other major acquisitions last year. 

And television? 

“Without major elections and the related political advertising, the lack of Olympic Games or the Super Bowl on our stations, we knew our television company would take a significant hit to profit,” Swartz reports. “Our cable television channels faced a very tough environment due to cord cutting and the ever-increasing cost of entertainment programming and sports rights. Additionally, our single biggest source of profit, global bond-rating agency Fitch Group, had achieved an extraordinary 2024, and while we expected continued growth in 2025 we certainly didn’t expect another banner year.”

But there is good news. 

“Bottom line: Fortunately, Fitch earnings far exceeded 2024 and as a result of the performance of our colleagues at many of our leading businesses our company once again had record revenue and profit,” Swartz notes. “Revenue grew 3% to $13.5 billion.”