NewsLifeMedia Hands Nick Smith Publisher Role

The chief executive of NewsLifeMedia, Nicole Sheffield, today announced the appointment of Nick Smith as publisher – home and lifestyle group at NewsLifeMedia.

In his new role Mr Smith, will be the publisher responsible for GQ Australia, Australian Golf Digest, Big League, Country Style, Vogue Living, Gardening Australia, InsideOut and homelife.com.au and will drive the commercial opportunities, brand development extensions and multi-platform strategies across the respective titles. He will continue to hold the position of editor-in-chief of the GQ Australia properties.

“I’m very excited that Nick is stepping up and taking on the challenge of publisher for our home and lifestyle brands. Nick has been an excellent editor of GQ and his experience in marketing and research as well as editorial, makes him a fantastic appointment and a publisher for the future of our business,” said Ms Sheffield.

“I’ve grown up in the magazine industry and learnt from some very talented men and women. It's been amazing and at times a little crazy. I'm now looking forward to sharing that wisdom with my teams and making these already great brands we have, even better,” said Mr Smith. “Times are tough, and we've got some work to do but we can be comforted in the fact that the Australian passion to live an enriched life never ceases. If we work to deliver the best lifestyle content to our audience in the way that they want it delivered, then we can't fail.”

Nick Smith has been the editor of premium men's lifestyle title GQ Australia for four years, in which time he has steered the title to become the leader in its category. He has also driven revenue growth and awareness for the prestige international brand in the Australian market through successful brand extensions in GQStyle (a bi-annual men's fashion magazine), GQ.com.au (Australia's leading premium men’s lifestyle website*) and marquee event, the GQ Men of the Year Awards. In 2011, Mr Smith received industry recognition for his work on GQ Australia and was awarded Editor of the Year by industry body Publishers Australia.

Mr Smith holds a Bachelor of Business from the University of Technology, Sydney, with majors in marketing and communications. After graduating in 1999, Mr Smith embarked on a career in marketing in the magazine industry and worked through the ranks on titles as varied as Woman's Day, Good Medicine, Home Beautiful and Your Garden. By the age of 25, he held the position of marketing manager across the Australian Women's Weekly properties, including the monthly magazine, website, cookbooks and TV program Fresh.

He worked at FPC Magazines as strategic marketing manager and was then given an opportunity to move into an editor's role on Fresh Weekly magazine.  Mr Smith was part of the launch team of men's sport and lifestyle title, ALPHA and worked his way to Deputy Editor before moving to NewsLifeMedia’s GQ Australia in 2008.

In the first year of his editorship of GQ Australia, readership increased by 110%**, subscriptions increased by 36% and total retail sales increased by 20%. In his second year, Mr Smith launched GQStyle as a means to cater to the increased interest in men's fashion in Australia and to increase GQ’s market share of luxury advertisers. It is now in its 4th edition.

2010 saw him introduce GQ.com.au and be one of the first magazine editors in Australia to take full editorial control of both magazine and online properties. In 2011, the site attracted phenomenal growth in both local and international traffic and as of May 2012, is Australia's leading premium men's lifestyle website with 141,083 unique browsers and 1.06 million page impressions a month*.

In 2011, News Ltd identified Mr Smith's leadership potential, selecting him along with 17 other employees from across the News Ltd businesses to participate in its much-revered Leadership Development Program.

* Nielsen Site Census May 2012
** Roy Morgan Readership Research March 2010