Stephen Drucker, who was hired from House Beautiful last April to revamp Hearst’s staid Town & Country upscale lifestyle title, has not had his contract renewed, we hear. According to the magazine’s parent company, he will be replaced on March 1 by Jay Fielden, the former editor of the late Men’s Vogue. (A statement from Hearst says only that Drucker “decided to leave the company.”) Drucker had brought over several big names to revamp T&C including Vogue’s Billy Norwich, Michael Callahan from Philadelphia Magazine, Nandita Khanna from Departures, as well as Whitney Robinson from House Beautiful, Eimear Lynch from Bloomberg Businessweek, and Danielle Stein from W. He sought out “New Yorker–style” features from writers and talked openly about how he’d like to remake the title into a Tatler for the United States. Drucker also fired many of the staffers upon his arrival, or watched them quit. He hadn’t been at the title for even a year before his ouster.
Update: A spokesman assures us Drucker left of his own volition and on good terms, and is in fact now toasting Fielden in a meeting with the staff.
