June Smith-Sheppard, editor of IPC Media weekly magazine Pick Me Up, is to leave the publishing business to establish her own media consultancy.
Smith-Sheppard, who has been Pick Me Up editor for almost six years and is also editor-in-chief of Goodtoknow.co.uk, is expected to leave later this year.
Staff were told about her decision to leave the company she started at 33 years ago late last month.
She told Press Gazette: “IPC has presented me with fantastic career opportunities and I’ve worked with some of the best people in the business.
Related
“I’ve chosen to call my new business The Fabulous Consultancy because working in media is truly fabulous.”
Smith-Sheppard’s career at IPC started in 1978 when she was appointed to work across its range of teen titles.
She returned to IPC, after raising her family, as commissioning editor across its women’s weeklies before joining Chat magazine as features editor.
Content from our partners
She was then appointed associate editor of Chat in 1999, then editor in 2004.
In addition to editing Chat, Smith-Sheppard acted as launch editor of Pick Me Up, editing both titles until she took up the editorship of Pick Me Up full-time in June, 2005.
In 2005, IPC claimed Pick Me Up had the biggest debut ABC for a women’s weekly in a decade when just seven months after launch the magazine hit a circulation of more than half a million each week.
According to the most recent figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations, Pick Me Up was the 21st most actively purchased magazine in the UK during the first half of 2010 with weekly average sales of 310,260 during that period.
Fiona Dent, head of IPC’s women’s titles, said: “Quite simply, June has had an outstanding career at IPC and it is with real sadness that I accepted her resignation.
“But she has decided that now is the right time to broaden her career by launching her own consultancy.
“I’m in no doubt that she will make a huge success of it and we are already talking to her about being one of her first customers.”
Email pged@pressgazette.co.uk to point out mistakes, provide story tips or send in a letter for publication on our "Letters Page" blog
