The head of news and entertainment at ITV’s This Morning is moving to OK! as editor of the weekly celebrity magazine.
Charlotte Seligman said she hopes to help the title “be to publishing what This Morning is to television”.
OK! magazine was one of three celebrity magazines, together with New! and Star, to have been bought by Mirror publisher Reach from Express Newspapers in February 2018. Reach closed Star last autumn.
During Seligman’s eight years at This Morning, the programme’s news and entertainment teams have merged and big interview scoops under her “get there first” approach have included the last two Prime Ministers, Hillary Clinton and David Beckham.
Seligman said: “Although I’ve loved my time at ITV, this was too good an opportunity to turn down and I can’t wait to get my hands on OK!
“Leading the agenda with big exclusives is what I do best, and there’s no reason why this time next year OK! can’t be to publishing what This Morning is to television.”
Seligman will report to Reach’s magazine editor-in-chief Caroline Waterston who joined the publisher earlier this year to look after OK! and New!
Reach said she has been “implementing a number of changes in view of a larger multi-media strategy”.
Waterston said: “It’s a real coup for us to be bringing Charlotte to OK!
“She is a journalist of the highest calibre who will bring with her a wealth of experience, contacts and drive, and I can’t wait to work with her to bring OK! into the future and make it a true cultural icon again.”
Waterston has been looking after OK! alongside deputy editor Rowan Erlam after the magazine’s previous editor-in-chief Kirsty Tyler left in April.
OK! had an average circulation of 126,017 in the first six months of this year, a 19 per cent drop year-on-year.
In July to December 2017, before it was bought by Reach, the title was selling 165,583 copies. Between 2000 and 2009 the magazine was regularly selling 500,000 to 650,000 copies.
Seligman started her career as a junior reporter at the Jewish Chronicle and then the now-defunct News of the World as a features writer, before moving to Reach (then Trinity Mirror) to work in the same role on the Sunday People.
She spent ten years as features director and deputy editor at Best magazine before moving to This Morning.
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