After the shock departure of Helen McCabe from her editor-in-chief role at Australian Women’s Weekly, and speculation she might’ve been shown the door by Bauer, McCabe has resurfaced at Nine Entertainment to head up the lifestyle division for nine.com.au, effective immediately.
Following the major relaunch of Nine’s digital platform, and the shift from the ninemsn brand to nine.com.au to cement its place in the Nine family.
McCabe makes a return of sorts to Nine, after working on The Weekly in 2009 when it was still published by Nine’s ACP Magazines, before the big German giant Bauer came along and acquired it.
McCabe will report to Nine’s chief digital and marketing officer Alex Parsons, who said McCabe will be at the helm of a digital offering “vastly different to anything in the Australian market today”.
“Helen will bring a wealth of content and commercial experience coupled with real leadership energy to our nine.com.au lifestyle business. I am really excited to be working with Helen to continue to drive and develop our already significant sites including 9Honey, 9Coach and the recently launched 9Kitchen.
“These sites are already market leaders in their respective categories and continue to experience strong growth. Our future offering will be vastly different to anything in the Australian market today and I look forward to making that a reality with Helen.”
McCabe said it was the chance for her to step into a “dream role” and keep her finger on the pulse of lifestyle news for Aussie women.
“After 20 odd years in newspapers and magazines this is the dream role. Nine, under Hugh Marks and Alex Parsons, has an ambitious vision for its lifestyle sites,” she said.
“It means I get to continue my passion for creating exciting, relevant content and products for Australian women.”
Nine CEO Hugh Marks added, “Helen’s appointment is another strong statement on our focus on delivering great Australian content to our audiences across all platforms of our business.
“Helen has a strong creative vision, a valuable understanding of the content that drives audience engagement, and very longstanding commercial relationships. What better time for Helen and ourselves to take our brands to the next level.”
