Press Gazette has ranked the biggest UK and US news publishers on Instagram with four achieving follower-counts above ten million.

We looked at the news publishers from our top 50 UK and US website rankings to compile our new research.

Two publishers – BBC News (27.8 million) and CNN (20 million) – are above the 20 million mark. When Press Gazette last ranked publisher Instagram accounts (in June 2023) BBC News had 7.4m followers on the platform and CNN 4.2m.

The top two on Instagram are followed by the New York Times (18.2 million) and People (13.6 million).

In comparison, only one news publisher (Daily Mail) from the two top 50 lists has topped ten million on Tiktok, the newer platform.

Ladbible does not feature in the latest ranking because it has it has fallen out of the list of the top 50 news websites in the UK. It currently has 14.1 million followers to its biggest Instagram account. Cosmopolitan, The Daily Wire, The Verge, NME, Epoch Times and Gateway Pundit similarly have fallen out of our top 50s so do not eapp

Excluding the impact of Ladbible’s removal, the top seven remain the same – but The Guardian (5.8 million followers) in eighth place has overtaken Buzzfeed and Unilad (both 5.7 million).

The fastest-growing Instagram account over a two-year period was the New York Post, increasing by 74.7% since 2022 to 1.2 million.

It was followed by Healthline Media (up 60% since 2022 to 1.3 million) and UK tabloid the Mirror (up 57% to 441,000).

Four news publishers on our list saw their Instagram followings decline since June 2023: Buzzfeed (down 7%), sister publication Huffpost (3% to 3.2 million), Unilad (down 2%) and The Daily Beast (down 2% to 452,000).

Since June 2023 only, the Mirror was the fastest-growing (up 45%) followed by ITV News (up 34% to 512,000) and the New York Post (up 32%).

But the follower count for BBC News increased the most in absolute terms (2.1 million) since last year - almost double the next largest growth seen by Fox News (up 1.2 million to 9.4 million).

Four added at least one million followers to their counts - also including the New York Times and People.

The percentage of people saying they use Instagram for news has risen from 2% in 2014 to 15% this year in 12 key markets surveyed by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (UK, US, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Denmark, Finland, Japan, Australia, Brazil and Ireland.

It remains behind Facebook, Youtube and Whatsapp in importance but has overtaken Twitter/X and is still ahead of Tiktok and Snapchat.

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Some 18 out of the top 50 UK news websites have room for improvement in their site performance, according to new analysis by website design and development company Baytree.

The Baytree Digital Performance Score (BPS) was created by Baytree’s in-house data and analytics specialists analysing data from billions of real-world Chrome visits, which the company said makes it a realistic benchmark for performance.

The score is tranched into three categories: Less than 80 is a score that requires improvement, 80-90 is considered good and above 90 is described as excellent.

Baytree measures the speed at which sites load, an aspect of performance that is closely connected to increased page views, user retention and SEO positions.

Eight of the 50 publishers were ranked as excellent, led by Digital Spy and the i. Also marked as excellent were LBC, The Guardian, Money Saving Expert, New York Times, Cosmopolitan and NME.

Baytree said: “Across the data we see a clear pattern in performance between those who have invested in site performance, with some digital-first publishers ranking very highly, along with some mainstream legacy publishers, such as The Guardian and New York Times.

“There is also a clear trend in ad strategy between the publications that perform well on this index, with many ranking highly relying more on subscriptions, donations and affiliate revenue. Towards the bottom of the table; there is a much higher reliance on invasive advertising which clearly reduces their scores.

“We believe that significant thought has to be invested in this strategy going forward, as rationalisation of ad inventory could lead to significant user experience and SEO improvement, that would then increase pageviews – which could actually improve revenue vs aggressive advertising strategies. We believe this will be a key theme over the next year or two in the industry.

“We’ve seen forward-thinking publishers really start pivoting to aggressively reduce page load time, which has been a refreshing change from previous approaches to load pages with far too many inefficient tracking, analytics and ad embeds.”

Users can see their own score on the publisher performance page on the Baytree website.

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Hello! magazine is the UK’s most popular women’s publication online, according to a new ranking of women’s news and lifestyle websites by Press Gazette.

The celebrity, fashion and lifestyle brand, owned by Spanish parent company ¡Hola!, reached 8.5 million people in July – 17% of the UK online audience aged over 15 – although this was down 23% year-on-year.

It was followed by the website of Hearst-owned Good Housekeeping (audience of 4.7 million, up 2% year-on-year) and Reach’s OK! (3.9 million, down 24%).

Cosmopolitan, also owned by Hearst, was fourth (3.3 million people, down 50%), while Conde Nast’s Glamour UK (2.7 million people, up 21%) completed the top five according to the new Ipsos iris figures.

Most popular women’s news and magazine websites in the UK (monthly audience):

1. Hello! Magazine (8.5 million)
2. Good Housekeeping (4.7 million)
3. OK! (3.9 million)
4. Cosmopolitan (3.3 million)
5. Glamour UK (2.7 million)
6. Women’s Health (2.3 million)
7. Marie Claire (2 million)
8. British Vogue (2 million)
9. Stylist (1.6 million)
10. Woman and Home (1.4 million)

Cosmopolitan UK editor-in-chief Claire Hodgson told Press Gazette earlier this year that while print remains integral to the brand, Cosmopolitan is “a really thriving digital business” and a “very strong digital brand”.

Twenty of the 28 women’s brands in our ranking for which year-on-year change data is available saw audience decline in July.

At the same time, the women’s print magazine sector has been shrinking almost across the board. Cosmopolitan UK’s total circulation has declined by 70% in the past ten years, falling to an average of 120,495 in 2022 according to ABC data, while Elle UK’s circulation declined by 53% in the past decade to 81,032. Other titles such as Glamour and In Style have dropped their print editions altogether.

The highest-ranked digital native brand in the ranking was Tyla, from Manchester-based social publisher Ladbible group. Tyla’s website and app reached 1.2 million people in the UK in July (down 15% year-on-year).

Press Gazette used Ipsos iris’ ranking of the top 2100 online brand groups and selected the biggest magazine and news brands which, in our view, are consumed by a majority female audience. It should be noted, however, that some websites on our list may no longer be thought of as strictly for women and may appeal to men or LGBTQ+ audiences as well.

US women’s beauty publication Allure saw the biggest growth with its UK audience up 31% year-on-year to 483,029. The Conde Nast title went digital-only this year after publishing its final print edition in December 2022.

Glamour UK, Who What Wear (1.1 million, up 19%), Prima (750,113, up 12%), She Knows (591,004, up 10%) and Byrdie (576,795, up 10%) were the other five brands to see double-digit growth. Good Housekeeping and Sheerluxe (607,349, up 1%) saw audience growth in the single figures.

The biggest year-on-year audience falls were recorded for Heat World (628,323, down 79%), Elle (814,757, down 59%), Closer (617,608, down 58%) and Bustle (727,761, down 56%).

By page views, Hello! (31.4 million page views), Good Housekeeping (16.7 million) and OK! (16.6 million) took the top three spots, as with total audience.

The same three brands also dominated for total minutes spent with their content, although OK! overtook Good Housekeeping on this metric. Hello! was well ahead with 43.5 million minutes, with the others on 15.2 million and 13.9 million minutes respectively.

Tyla (rank four for page views and rank three for time spent), however, came first for average number of minutes spent with its content per user (6 minutes 56 seconds) ahead of second-placed Sheerluxe (5 minutes 38 seconds).

Men's sector

Among the Ipsos iris list of over 2,000 top online brands in the UK by audience size (covering all online sectors), we could only filter out a handful which could be explicitly defined as men's lifestyle. We excluded titles covering topics such as gadgets, tech and motoring.

Top-ranked was Conde Nast's British GQ (audience of 1.6 million, up 13% year-on-year) followed by Men's Health (1.4 million, down 13% year-on-year) and Esquire (880,202, down 33%).

Despite ranking second for reach, Men's Health was top for engagement, with audiences spending a combined 4.6 million minutes with its content in July compared to 3.3 million for British GQ. There were also 3.5 million page views to the brand, again ahead of British GQ (2.5 million).

Ipsos iris replaced Comscore as the industry-recognised standard in 2021. Ipsos iris data is partly derived from a panel of 10,000 people aged 15 and over that is designed to be nationally representative. The participants have meters installed across 25,000 personal devices to passively measure website and app usage.

This is combined with data from participating websites that are tagged so all devices visiting the site can be identified and logged.

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Women’s magazines (along with other mag sectors) had a tough time in the 2010s, with Marie Claire, Now, InStyle UK, Look and Glamour among the print closures.

But Cosmopolitan UK, owned by Hearst UK, survived that difficult period and has massively grown its digital audience in the past eight years from about four million users per month to 16.8 million around the world.

It has made it its mission to be on top of the latest trends, including being one of the first UK publishers to create shows for Snapchat Discover in 2018 and experimenting with gaming platform Roblox last year.

Cosmopolitan UK editor-in-chief Claire Hodgson spoke to Press Gazette about what defines the brand in 2023, the role of a modern magazine editor, and how they are preparing for whatever the future may hold next.

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Cosmopolitan UK has both changed radically and not much at all in its 51 years of publishing.

The brand launched in the UK in March 1972 with cover lines promising details about Michael Parkinson’s vasectomy, sex advice if your man is having problems in bed, Jilly Cooper’s perspective on what makes men “fantastic lovers”, and diet tips. Since then, it has expanded far beyond the limitations of print but its “core DNA” remains the same, according to editor-in-chief Claire Hodgson.

Print magazines have had a tough time lately. Cosmopolitan UK’s total circulation has fallen by 66% in five years (reaching an average of 120,495 in 2022) and has gone from monthly to bi-monthly. But it is not alone: in the women’s sector, Elle UK’s circulation has fallen by 58% in ten years to 81,032, while Grazia has dropped by 53% in the past decade to 88,204. And Marie Claire UK, Now, InStyle UK, Look and Glamour all closed in print, if not altogether, in the late 2010s.

In just a few years, however, Cosmopolitan UK and its competitors have built sizeable audiences elsewhere. Hodgson was appointed digital editor at the title in 2015 and at that time, she says, Cosmopolitan UK was averaging about three-and-a-half to four million global users per month online. By 2022, that had reached an average of 16.8 million average unique users globally, 4.8 million in the UK in December, while she says it gets about 15 million video views each month and has just under six million social media followers.

Speaking to Press Gazette's Future of Media Explained podcast, Hodgson said that since becoming editor-in-chief in 2019, she has enjoyed "getting to be an editor that can really, with my amazing team, rethink what a magazine brand is and means nowadays, and I think that is quite different from what it has ever meant before in terms of its scope".

Despite the evolution, "print is still a really, really integral part of what we do as a brand, completely," she said. "But we're also a really thriving digital business now. We're a video content producer. We're a social media brand. Obviously a very strong digital brand. But so many other things as well."

Hodgson later added "our passion for print has really not wavered" and noted that 44% of Cosmopolitan UK's circulation is made up of paid subscriptions. She also revealed that revenue per issue on the digital editions of the magazine grew by 13% in 2022 – even though the circulation of the digital edition fell by 17% year-on-year to 23,440 (print fell by 12% to 97,055).

The print magazine remains the "shop window" of the brand and acts as a "physical example of what we represent as a brand", Hodgson continued. "It really helps in terms of that halo effect, that brand recognition that people have."

While not giving up on print, Cosmo wants to "be a brand that is the trendsetter in making a platform a thing to begin with". For example, Hodgson pointed out that it was among the first media partners creating shows for Snapchat's Discover page when it launched in the UK.

Within a few weeks, Hodgson said, about 50% to 60% of Cosmo's Snapchat audience was coming back three to five days a week, a trend that is continuing now, while about 30% go to the brand five to seven days a week.

"And you're talking about a very big audience on there so it's a really loyal, engaged audience," Hodgson said, "and I think that's one of the things that is so great about this job is that we're a brand that's very innovative and can really try and play and experiment with these things, but also because we've got that 50 years of heritage and this very iconic title we've got this really lovely deep engagement and loyalty from our audience. So we do launch on these platforms and then we see our readers coming with us on that journey and enjoying the content we produce in a very different way."

This is also part of why Cosmo has built a virtual world in which it is summer all year round on the gaming platform Roblox, currently in its beta stage.

"We're a brand that wants to be first and looking at what's next, and the metaverse is the next thing that we all need to be thinking about and aware of," Hodgson explained.

It also means Cosmo can work on connecting with 16 to 24-year-olds, the fastest-growing demographic on Roblox. Cosmo's audience may be largely summed up as young women – but it is not that simple, Hodgson said.

"I even hesitate to call the Cosmopolitan audience young women now," she said. "Obviously young women have always been our target audience as a brand, but it's in our name really - Cosmopolitan has always been really about diversity, inclusivity, really good representation of a very broad scope of people, I think, and when you look at the kind of generations we are talking to today, actually calling them young women feels increasingly insufficient because our audience are increasingly very gender fluid. We have a really thriving LGBTQ audience.

"But certainly we are a brand that's obviously targeting that 18 to 35 demographic, but equally that audience can skew very much younger or older, depending on the part of the brand we're looking at as well."

Diversity, inclusivity, relatability part of 'core DNA'

Regardless of these evolutions in audience and platforms, Hodgson said the "core DNA" of Cosmo has stayed the same – with sex, relationships and love content a big part of what it does alongside entertainment, celebrity, fashion, beauty and careers coverage.

She is "really proud" of the way the brand talks about sex and love, she said, especially today when there are wider conversations around LGBTQ representation, gender identity, and what healthy relationships look like.

"We saw a huge increase in reports of domestic abuse during the pandemic, which is incredibly worrying and something we've addressed a lot of times as a brand. I think consent has become increasingly important. There's so many aspects of what relationships mean to people and I feel incredibly privileged that we have this huge platform with which to talk to our readers and say actually, this is what you deserve in your relationships, in your life, and this is how you can ask for that and make sure you demand that your partner is treating you with respect and love and kindness.

"So that will always be a really core part of our DNA and I'm very proud of the fact that it is, in ways that a lot of other brands out there don't really tackle that as a topic area."

Hodgson later added: "I don't really think the core DNA of what our brand is and what it represents has actually changed that much over 50 years. We were talking about the AIDS crisis back in the 1980s. We had Boy George on our cover. We have always been a brand that is really diverse, inclusive, relatable, approachable to people, but that also was really tackling quite meaty, heavy issues that sometimes other people were afraid to go there, and I think that that is one of the things that has really been important because I think when your audience understand who you are and what they would come to you for, it builds habit."

Being relevant: in content, aesthetic and platforms

She added that this clarity of brand creates a "really strong foundation" for the experimentation taking place on different platforms.

After that, the content has to put the consumer first and revenue will follow, Hodgson believes. "We are really not in the business of driving clickbait content, pushing popups, forcing engagement on social. We're just in the business of trying to create a really great consumer experience because I think when you just come at it from that angle and have your audience at the forefront of what you're doing, it becomes much more organic."

Despite the benefits of all these new platforms, Hodgson counts technology as Cosmo's biggest competitor nowadays rather than other magazine brands. This is why a broad strategy is best, she said – so Google or Meta algorithm changes are less impactful.

Cosmo's direct traffic was up 50% last year, Hodgson said, compared to social traffic growth of about 10%. "That's just showing if you put your reader first and your audience first and you can get that really loyal, engaged habit from them then you're going to build that direct relationship with them and it matters a bit less what other headwinds you're facing."

Looking further into 2023 and beyond, Hodgson's biggest priority for Cosmo as a brand is keeping it relevant, which she sees in three ways: content, aesthetics and platforms.

"We've got to be really brave and bold with the stuff we cover – maybe addressing topics other people haven't gone to yet because that's a really big part of staying relevant in the lives of your reader.

"There's having a really fresh-feeling aesthetic – we actually had our biggest redesign in probably about a decade last summer across all of our platforms that was all about making sure our brand across everything we do felt super joined-up and very current and relevant to the lives of our audience... and then lastly it's relevancy of platform. You can be creating amazing zeitgeist-y content that looks incredible but if you're just pumping it out in old formats, on old platforms, you're probably not going to really entertain or excite your current audience, and you're definitely not going to attract any new audience."

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America’s top 50 most popular magazines lost a combined circulation of nearly 1m in the second half of 2021, according to Alliance for Audited Media (AAM) figures analysed by Press Gazette.

The two largest magazines in the United States are both published by the American Association of Retired People (AARP) and distributed to paying members. The AARP’s Magazine (circulation, 22,890,227) and Bulletin (22,566,080) both grew their circulations slightly in the second half of 2021.

The next two largest titles – Better Homes And Gardens and People – both also retained steady circulations thanks to strong digital performances, especially through Apple’s premium aggregation service, News+.

Following a 2021 merger between Dotdash and Meredith’s magazine division, 15 of America’s top 50 periodicals now share the same publisher. Hearst owns eight of the top 50, and Conde Nast publishes six of them.

Four of Hearst’s titles – Men’s Health, Women’s Health, Woman’s Day and Good Housekeeping — experienced the worst circulation declines in the second half of 2021, the AAM figures show.

TV Guide Magazine, members magazine Texas Co-Op Power and Time – which has grown strongly on Apple News+ – were the best performing titles in terms of period-on-period growth.

The first table shows the top 50 magazines in the US, ranked by average paid-for circulations in the second half of 2021. Below, in our second table, we break down circulations by print subscriptions, digital subscriptions and single issue sales.

The total circulation figures include “verified” copies that are bought by businesses, like hotels and airlines, and made freely available to customers. They exclude free copy circulations. Circulations defined as non-paid by the AAM have been excluded from our totals.

The second table illustrates that print remains an important medium for America’s magazine brands. Only Us Weekly and Men’s Journal report having larger circulations in digital than in print.

Print subscriptions, specifically, are the biggest source of sales for publishers in general. Good Housekeeping, Woman’s Day, Parents and People have the largest single-copy sale circulations.

Photo credit: Reuters/Carlo Allegri

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America’s largest magazines retained 95% of their circulation through the Covid-19 crisis, Press Gazette research suggests.

Strong print subscription bases and growing digital issue readership have helped the likes of Vanity Fair, Vogue and the New Yorker grow over the past year.

Our analysis of Alliance for Audited Media (AAM) figures suggests that magazines have fared better than newspapers through the pandemic.

Press Gazette’s ranking of the 50 biggest US magazines by circulation shows that print remains the sector’s dominant medium, despite subscription and single-copy sales falling in recent years.

On average across the top 50, print subscription circulations have fallen by 7% over the past two years, from 125m overall to 116m, while single-copy sales are down 11%, from 3.2m in the first half of 2019 to 2.8m in the first half of this year.

Digital subscription circulations, which include magazine readership through aggregators like Apple News+, have grown by 70% in the same period, from 4.3m to 7.3m.

As our top 50 ranking below shows, the two largest magazines in the US – with average circulations of more than 22m – are distributed to members of the American Association of Retired People (AARP).

Better Homes And Gardens and People, both part of Meredith, are the next highest, with circulations of 7.6m and 3.4m respectively.

Good Housekeeping (3.3m, Hearst), Reader’s Digest (2.7m, Trusted Media Brands), Southern Living (2.8m, Meredith), Shape (2.5m, Meredith), Woman’s Day (2.4m, Hearst) and Cosmopolitan (2.2m, Hearst) make up the rest of the top ten.

A note about the workings: This table shows the 50 largest US magazines that are audited by the AAM. The total figure includes paid circulation and ‘verified’ circulation, but not non-paid circulation. Verified circulations include copies that are made free to the public by businesses, e.g. hotels. The exclusion of non-paid circulations means that the third largest magazine on AAM records – Costco Connection – is not included in our ranking. Reader’s Digest loses around 350,000 from its circulation because of the exclusion of non-paid copies.

It is worth noting that the size of the AARP’s two magazines – classified as paid-for by the AAM because they are included in membership costs – skews the balance of average print-versus-digital circulations.

But, as demonstrated in the pie charts below, print subscriptions still dominate the overall circulations of other large US magazines.

After the AARP titles, the magazines with the next largest print subscription circulations are Better Homes And Gardens (Meredith), Good Housekeeping (Hearst) and People (Meredith).

Note: The below figures are for individual print subscriptions. They do not include verified or non-paid print subscriptions.

Us Weekly, Men’s Journal and Star Magazine – which does not make the top 50 list – have the largest digital circulations, according to the AAM. All three are owned by A360 Media, which declined to provide comment for this article.

Note: The below figures are categorised by the AAM as paid digital subscription circulations. They include “individually paid, partnership, sponsored and multi-title” platforms including Apple News+ and Readly. 

The titles that have retained the best single-copy sale circulations – in spite of Covid-19 disruption to the retail world – are Bauer’s First For Women and Woman’s World, neither of which made it into the top 50. People magazine comes third for single-copy sales.

Note: Single-copy sales figures below are predominantly print rather than digital. The highest-ranking title for single-copy digital sales specifically was People, with an average of 396 copies per week. 

According to MPA, the Association for Magazine Media, 221.9m American adults read magazines in 2020, down from 224.6m in 2018.

The MPA’s recent Magazine Media Factbook report said: “Covid-19 shut down America, limiting pass-along readership [in 2020].” But it added that publishers are expecting “readership to bounce back when the public returns to shared spaces”.

Photo credit: Michele Ursino

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Cosmopolitan has seen the biggest circulation drop among women’s magazines so far this year, new ABC figures reveal.

The monthly magazine’s average circulation fell by 32 per cent year-on-year to 206,510 copies in the first six months of 2019.

Publisher Hearst said this drop could mainly be attributed to a trial cover price increase from £2 to £2.50 in the first three months of the year.

Among weekly women’s titles OK! magazine – now owned by Reach – was the hardest hit, falling 19 per cent year-on-year to 126,017.

Monthly fashion title Red fared the best, growing 3 per cent to 175,920.

The only other paid women’s titles to grow circulations were Elle UK, where publisher Hearst said new editor-in-chief Farrah Storr is “driving the next phase of its development”, Harper’s Bazaar, Tatler and Vogue.

TI Media, which publishes Chat, Pick Me Up, Woman, Woman’s Own and Women’s Weekly, said it had removed these titles from multi-pack promotions in the past year.

“While bigger packs inflate sales due to the price advantage they can offer, when these packs alone are available they limit choice and do not serve those consumers who wish to purchase their favourite magazine only,” the publisher said.

Women’s lifestyle and fashion magazine circulations for the six-months to the end of June 2019 (ABC):

Women’s weekly magazine ABCs for the six-month period to the end of June 2019:

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Cosmopolitan UK’s digital editorial director has been named as the title’s next editor-in-chief.

“Standout talent” Claire Hodgson replaces Farrah Storr, who has moved within publisher Hearst UK to edit Cosmo UK stablemate Elle UK, and begins her new role immediately.

Hodgson said her new role is a “dream come true”, having read the magazine as a teenager.

She was made Cosmo UK’s digital editor in November 2015 before taking on the role of digital editorial director in April last year.

Hearst UK claims Hodgson quadrupled the title’s online audience to 15.7m (figure from January 2019) and grown the brand’s social following to more than 5.2m during her tenure.

Cosmo UK was named Digital Brand of the Year at the 2018 Professional Publishers Association Digital Awards.

But, the brand’s monthly print circulation fell by nearly a third year-on-year to just over 240,351 – of which 50,298 are free copies – in the second half of 2018.

This was the second worst fall across the women’s UK magazine industry, behind weekly Now (a 43 per cent drop), and the worst among women’s monthly magazines – although its sales remain among the highest.

Said Hodgson: “I have read Cosmopolitan since I was a teenager, so to be made editor-in-chief is a dream come true.

“Cosmopolitan is all about uplifting, empowering and championing young women everywhere, spotlighting new voices and creating a sense of community.

“It not only epitomises diversity and inclusivity, but has built a reputation for fearless, award-winning investigative journalism that will continue to underpin everything we do.

“I am thrilled to be taking the helm at such an exciting time for Cosmopolitan and have the opportunity to work with such a talented team, who are just as obsessed with the brand as I am.”

Cosmo UK managing editor Jacqui Cave said: “Claire has a proven track record for generating meaningful content which engages audiences across multiple channels.

“She has built Cosmopolitan’s digital proposition to be one of the most highly-respected, inclusive and inspiring brands in the industry and she is the perfect person to lead Cosmopolitan’s further cross-platform brand alignment that will benefit both consumers and commercial partners.”

Hearst UK chief executive James Wildman added: “Claire is one of the brightest brains in the business and I am delighted to appoint such a forward-thinking, cultural architect in this high-profile role.

“This appointment underlines Hearst’s commitment to providing strong development opportunities for standout talent.

“It is such an exciting chapter in the evolution of our business as we look to cultivate an even more collaborative brand culture based on greater idea, resource and insight sharing.”

Picture: Hearst UK

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Cosmopolitan UK editor-in-chief Farrah Storr has moved across to take the top job at Hearst UK stablemate Elle UK.

Storr has spent four years in the editor’s chair at Cosmo and prior to that was the launch editor of Women’s Health, also part of Hearst.

The move comes as Cosmo recorded a circulation fall of 32 per cent year-on-year in the final six months of 2018, the biggest drop across monthly titles (ABC) and second largest across the women’s UK magazine industry.

Hearst said Storr’s replacement would be revealed “in due course”.

Storr said: “Elle is a truly iconic brand, which is steeped in style history, and I am incredibly proud to be taking the helm at such an exciting time in our industry.

“My aim is to deliver impactful content, initiatives and experiences, which will play a significant role in our audience’s lives. I cannot wait to join the talented team and lead the next phase of Elle’s journey.”

Elle UK managing director Jacqui Cave added: “Farrah is an exceptional Editor who has an ingrained instinct of what makes audiences tick.

“She is extremely well-respected in the industry and has spearheaded innovative brand initiatives which resonate with both readers and commercial partners.

“Farrah is the perfect person to lead the iconic Elle brand, and I am thrilled to be working with her on the next phase of the brand’s development.”

Storr is not the only Hearst staffer to have a change of job title this week.

Harper’s Bazaar fashion director Avril Mair and beauty director Katy Young have become group fashion director and group beauty director respectively.

Hearst said the expansion of their roles aimed to “foster greater collaboration to benefit both audiences and advertisers across our leading fashion brands”.

A spokesperson said no fashion director or beauty director roles had been cut as a result of the change.

Picture: Hearst UK

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