#Entertainment Weekly Editor departs as successor search is underway

The top editor at Entertainment Weekly, JD Heyman, is out, and a search for a successor is underway.

“JD Heyman and Entertainment Weekly/Meredith Corporation have parted ways effective immediately,” a company spokeswoman said. “Meredith thanks JD for his contributions to the EW and People brands over his many years of service. A national search is being conducted to fill the role.”

The spokeswoman declined to comment beyond the terse statement. Heyman, who had been the top editor at EW since 2019 and earlier worked at People, didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Alex Brex, the director of editorial operations for the entertainment and style group, and Tim Leong, deputy editor, creative director at EW, will oversee the editorial operations while the search is underway for a successor, the company said.

It has been a bumpy few years for EW. Time spent $150 million on the magazine before it became profitable by the end of 1996, turning a six-figure profit for the first time. In its peak years, it was cranking out more than $50 million a year in profits.

But EW had fallen on hard times more recently. When it was still owned by Time Inc. in 2017, the magazine said it was moving the publication from New York City where it was launched as a spinoff of People in 1990.

By the time EW completed the move to LA, shedding about 20 staffers in the process, Time Inc. had been been sold to Meredith in a $2.8 billion deal. It was speculated that the parent company wanted to sell EW at the same time that it was putting Time, Sports Illustrated, Fortune and Money on the block.

But given EW’s close to ties to People, the company was persuaded to hang onto EW. In June 2019, the print edition was cut back from its already curtailed frequency of 34 issues a year to a monthly print edition, which resulted in a further cutback of about a dozen editorial positions.

When the move was announced, EW editor Henry Goldblatt, who had supervised the move to LA and pushed to keep the title off the block, resigned. Heyman, the deputy editor of People, was handed the top job.