Newsweek Hires Kevin Gentzel as Global Chief Commercial and Growth Officer

The legacy news publisher Newsweek has hired Kevin Gentzel as its global chief commercial and growth officer, a newly created role, where he will report to chief executive Dev Pragad, Adweek has learned. Gentzel began the role Wednesday. In the position, he will oversee all lines of revenue across the Newsweek portfolio, including advertising, partnerships, events, awards and a nascent subscription business, which the publisher launched in 2020. “I love helping important legacy media brands discover their digital future––that has been a common denominator across my career,” Gentzel said. “After having a series of conversations with Dev, I believe that Newsweek can grow with a bigger thought process on the commercial strategy.” Gentzel joins Newsweek from Gannett, where he served as its president of marketing solutions and chief revenue officer for seven years. He has also held leadership roles at Yahoo, The Washington Post and Forbes. At Newsweek, Gentzel hopes to grow the consumer revenue business into an operation with hundreds of thousands of digital subscribers, though he declined to provide current figures. He also expressed a desire to strike brand partnerships, grow its events portfolio and potentially explore acquisitions. Gentzel joins Newsweek from Gannett, where he served as chief revenue officer for seven years. Newsweek finds profitability despite legal distractions The 86-year-old publisher, which employs roughly 250 full-time staff across the U.S. and U.K., generated $60 million in revenue in 2021 and is profitable, according to Pragad. But its commercial success has been, at times, eclipsed by its outsized legal dramatics. The publisher has changed hands a number of times in its history, but its courtroom concerns stem from its period as a property of IBT Media, which purchased Newsweek in 2014 for an undisclosed sum. In 2018, Newsweek was spun out from IBT Media, but IBT Media sued Newsweek in July in an effort to void the 2018 deal. Newsweek countersued the same month, though its lawsuit extends beyond IBT Media to include the religious leader David Jang, his church group the World Olivet Assembly and a Bible college Jang founded in Southern California, called Olivet University. Pragad formerly belonged to the World Olivet Assembly, but in April, he told staff he severed ties with it. While IBT Media owned Newsweek, a former co-owner of IBT Media, Etienne Uzac, mismanaged the finances of the company as part of a multimillion-dollar fraud scheme, a charge for which he pleaded guilty in 2020. The Newsweek countersuit alleges that the publisher incurred $35 million in damages as a result of the criminal enterprise. In 2021, the content recommendation company Taboola sued Newsweek for allegedly failing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in backdated fees. A spokesperson for the company told Axios that the company has settled the lawsuit and is debt-free. Gentzel, who says he is unconcerned about the courtroom battle, instead focused on the commercial opportunities made possible by the brand equity of Newsweek. “Any media company in transformation is going to have its unique set of challenges and opportunities,” he said. “Clearly, I believe that the opportunities outweigh the challenges.” Hearst Magazines Hires Lisa Ryan Howard as Global Chief Revenue Officer

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Newsweek Hires Kevin Gentzel as Global Chief Commercial and Growth Officer

He joins the publisher from Gannett, where he served as its chief revenue officer

Mark Stenberg

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