Robert Stieve, who recently stepped down as editor in chief of Phoenix magazine, has been hired as editor of Arizona Highways.
Stieve, 43, is expected to start May 14.
In a phone interview, Stieve said the challenge will be to keep the magazine’s older core subscribers in the fold while building on a new and younger readership.
“I think there’s an opportunity to bring in some new readers, and that’s something I’m really looking forward to,” Stieve said.
Arizona Highways is a state-owned publication, part of the Arizona Department of Transportation. The magazine gets no state funding. Its revenues come from subscriptions and related sales, including books and calendars.
Publisher Win Holden said he announced Stieve’s hiring to the magazine’s staff May 7. When Stieve left Phoenix magazine, Holden moved to make room for him with the resignation of Peter Alehsire.
Holden said he had worked with Stieve at Phoenix magazine some years back.
“He’s a first-rate journalist,” Holden said, adding Stieve has an “excellent knowledge about the state of Arizona, he’s spent a lot of time traveling the state.”
Changes loom
Holden said a fresh perspective will change things at the magazine, but said, “I would be very reluctant to predict what those changes would be.”
Stieve, he said, is known as a collaborative editor.
In bringing aboard new readers, Stieve said, he would like to turn around slumping subscription rates. A lot of that, he added, will hinge on the magazine’s content — the stories as well as the photography that has made Arizona Highways a worldwide brand.
“You still have to work to get those readers,” Stieve said. “Just because you can entice them to pick it up once at the newsstand, there’s got to be something there, that they’re going to want to pick it up month after month.”
Stieve’s resume says that during his stint at Phoenix magazine the subscription base grew by 46 percent. He spent eight years as editor in chief at Phoenix magazine, starting there as managing editor in 1996.
He said he left the magazine as part of an editorial shakeup.
The publisher, he said, “decided to go in a different direction. There’s been some turnover there the last six months. Three of the five key personnel in editorial have been replaced, and I was one of them.”
He said he had long regarded working at Arizona Highways as a dream job.
Along with the freelance writers and photographers — who provide 95 percent of the magazine’s content — Stieve will also be on the lookout for new stories in his travels about the state.
“That’s how I spend my free time,” he said. “Now I can go out there and have another purpose other than just getting out and relaxing.”