The revolving editor-in-chief chair at Chatelaine has taken another swivel with news that Maryam Sanati has left the publication, the fourth person to depart the helm of Canada’s largest magazine in the past five years.

Rogers Publishing confirmed the news Monday but would release no further details of Ms. Sanati’s exit. Her successor is Jane Francisco, who most recently served as editor-in-chief at Style at Home magazine.

The news comes after a year of declining revenue in magazine publishing and an announcement last week of 900 layoffs at Rogers Communications Inc., about 3% of the company’s work force. It also raises broader questions about the difficulty mass magazines, particularly those aimed at women, are facing as its audience ages or increasingly seeks out information through digital channels.

Recent changes at Rogers had apparently expanded the role of Chatelaine publisher Kerry Mitchell at the publications Glow and Today’s Parent and carved out a greater role at Chatelaine for Ken Whyte, publisher and editor-in-chief of Maclean’s as well as publisher of the Rogers’ magazines Canadian Business, Profit and Moneysense. As part of the shift, Dianne de Fenoyl, managing editor at Maclean’s since 2005, was named editorial director at Chatelaine two weeks ago.

“I don’t know that they know what they need to know to do over [at Chatelaine],” said an industry source familiar with the situation. “Mass titles have the hardest job of all — how do you have a really clear voice when your audience is several million? And Chatelaine is in a tricky category; it was created at a time when women lived differently.”

Readership for the English-language Chatelaine, which debuted in 1928, totalled 3.55 million, according to the Print Measurement Bureau 2009 fall study, down from 3.77-million in the spring. Readership was 3.87-million in 2008 and 4.22-million in 2007, according to PMB.

“You have to be careful about declining circulation because once you drop too low you can’t charge the same advertising rates, and at Rogers many [advertisers] buy media in bundles so it’s not just about Chatelaine — a decline in Chatelaine also affects rates at Flare, at Loulou,” the source said.

Chatelaine is the country’s largest magazine by revenue, according to Masthead’s annual ranking of the country’s Top 50 magazines. The publication had total revenue of $56.5-million in 2008, a year-over-year decline of 4.54%. The runners-up were Canadian Living ($50.1-million), Reader’s Digest ($39.2-million), Maclean’s ($37-million) and Canadian House & Home ($23.5-million).

Douglas Bennett, publisher of Masthead, said others in the industry are questioning whether Rogers is cleaning house in order to put its magazine division up for sale.

“[Chatelaine] is an important business for Rogers and has been a powerhouse for most of the decade. But there is a lot of restructuring going on in other parts of the [publishing] business and its wireless division is huge relative to publishing. It takes three days of Rogers’ wireless billing to generate the annual revenue of Chatelaine, approximately. That puts it in perspective.”

Chatelaine is not alone when it comes to falling circulation, Mr. Bennett added, noting many publications have tried in recent years to deliberately curb circulation as print costs soared. “Publishers have cut back and tried to find the most efficient size of circulation that will not blow the budget. You are trying to as a publisher to eliminate as much unprofitable circulation as possible, so you are reaching your core readership.”

Overall page counts at 75 of the country’s leading magazines, as tracked by Leading National Advertisers Canada, were down 18.2% year-over-year in the second quarter of 2009, with Chatelaine’s run-of-press page count down 20.9%.

Chatelaine’s editor-in-chief spot has been difficult to fill since Rona Maynard departed in 2004 after a decade-long tenure. Ms. Sanati, appointed to the job in February 2008, had been brought in to fill the shoes of Sara Angel, who left in mid-2007 after 13 months in the job. She succeeded Kim Pittaway, who quit after a rumoured dispute with management over editorial control and content a mere 15 months after replacing Ms. Maynard.

Ms. Francisco has served as editor-in-chief of beauty magazine Glow and was founding editor-in-chief of now-defunct Wish magazine. She also served as executive editor of St. Joseph’s Media’s Lifestyles group, which included Wish, Gardening Life and Canadian Family.

“Jane has a passion for journalism, a strong track record of success, and high-level experience with prominent Canadian magazine brands,” Mr. Whyte said in a statement. “She has an intuitive understanding of what Canadian women want, and we are confident she will serve Chatelaine’s readers very well.”

Underlying the story is an unease throughout the broader magazine industry and in women’s general interest magazines in particular, an anxiety that the gilded age of profitable women’s glossies is over, and that younger readers are looking to more targeted areas of information and advice, such as online recipe sites.

A study published last week by consulting company Mom Central Canada and ad agency Sharpe Blackmore Euro RSCG said Canadian mothers spend 1,000 more minutes each month online than their U.S. counterparts do, and twice as much time as those in the United Kingdom. So-called “digital moms” spend an average of three hours per day online, the study said.

“Everybody in the industry is worried about how to appeal to newer readers when their older readers are ageing,” said Chris Waddell, a professor at Carleton University’s School of Journalism and Communication. “One side of the argument says that the younger people will get older and will acquire the lifestyle their parents had, and the other argument would be that there is a generational change going on and that they won’t want to receive information in the same way as the generation before. The difficulty in making changes [targeting] a younger audience is that you may not get new readers and [although] your older audience isn’t gone yet, you might alienate them.”

Mr. Waddell said North American media have traditionally relied upon advertising to cover magazine publication costs much more heavily than have their European counterparts, and predicts readers will likely have to pay more for editorial content in the future.

hshaw@nationalpost.com