News Corp Australia’s The Australian and prestige titles division has unveiled its new leadership team responsible for driving audience and commercial growth.
Sophie Raptis has been appointed general manager, commercial, for The Australian and prestige titles. She returns to the Australian market in a new role and will be responsible for driving revenue growth and partnerships across the portfolio.
Raptis has more than 20 years’ sales experience, and was most recently as director of client sales at Ozone, an premium advertising platform that helps brands connect with audiences of the 35 publishing groups, including the UK’s leading publishers News UK, The Guardian, The Telegraph and Reach. Raptis was part of the Ozone team that won Sales Team of the Year at Campaign’s Media Week Awards in 2022.
Raptis has previously held senior sales roles at News UK, WSJ and Hearst. She will report to Gray and work closely with News managing director of client partnerships, Lou Barrett, and the client partnerships team.
Gray has made several key appointments to expand the division’s focus on audience engagement and digital subscription growth, digital storytelling and increased global collaboration with The Wall Street Journal and The Times.
The division’s leaders include: Kelvin Healey, editor of The Australian; Edwina McCann, editorial director and publisher, Prestige and Conde Nast Titles; Darren Davidson, managing editor and commercial director; Petra Rees, deputy editor; Georgina Windsor, deputy editor; Christine Kellett, head of digital; Claire Harvey, editorial director; Perry Williams, business editor; and, Johnathan Barhoumeh, head of video.
“These roles are key to building on our relationships with commercial clients, growing subscription and marketing capabilities, and deepening our global connections to deliver the greatest impact for Australia’s largest media portfolio reaching and engaging with affluent and invested Australians,” Gray said. “Our ambition is to craft first-class journalism for our audiences and subscribers, and great business results for our clients.”
Other recent senior appointments include Suzy Rolfe to general manager, marketing, audience and digital development; Chrissie Bell as general manager, subscriber data, platforms and growth and Helen McMurdo as general manager, tech platform partnerships.
The Australian and prestige portfolio of brands includes The Australian, Wish, The List, Travel + Luxury, The Weekend Australian Magazine and the Conde Nast International titles – Vogue Australia, Vogue Living and GQ Australia.
News Corp Australia is undergoing a corporate restructure, advised by PwC, with cuts across the group aimed at saving $65 million.
This involves splitting the business into three verticals, The Australian and prestige titles, State and Community Mastheads (which include its metro tabloids) and Free News and Lifestyle Mastheads, which includes news.com.au.
Nine’s newspapers report that most of the redundancies will be finalised this week. Up to 20 editorial staff have been reportedly notified their roles are redundant, including staff from The Courier Mail, The Daily Telegraph, The Hobart Mercury, Adelaide Advertiser and news.com.au.
Nine and Seven West Media are also going through their own rounds of redundancies with the former shedding up to 40 staff from Pedestrian Group earlier this week.
