Former Publisher of Rachael Ray, Martha Stewart Magazines Moves to Just A Pinch Recipe Club

FRANKLIN, Tenn., Sept. 21, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Veteran magazine industry executive Anne Balaban, the former publisher of Every Day with Rachael Ray and Martha Stewart's Everyday Food, has been named consulting publisher and chief revenue officer at American Hometown Media's Just A Pinch Recipe Club, a fast-growing digital platform that's becoming known as a "Facebook for foodies."

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Balaban most recently was a vice president at Reader's Digest Association, where as publisher of Every Day with Rachael Ray she conceived and implemented the brand's "Keep it Fun, Keep it Easy, Keep it Real" tagline campaign and engineered its emerging media strategy and multiplatform brand programs, which combined TV, print and digital.

At Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Balaban was senior vice president and publisher of Everyday Food magazine, for which she designed, sold and executed cross-media programs that included Stewart's syndicated TV show and Everyday Food's PBS programming. Before moving to that role, she was sales director at Martha Stewart Living.

"Bringing in someone with Anne's experience is a smart step for JustAPinch.com as we move toward taking our site to a new level in terms of revenue growth and partnership opportunities," said Dan Hammond, chairman, president and CEO of the company, based in suburban Nashville.  "Anne has established a national reputation among brand managers as someone who understands how to deliver a return on investment for marketers using multiple platforms."

At JustAPinch.com, Balaban will help to develop partnership opportunities, work across our national sales team and internal staff, and provide significant leadership in attaining our revenue growth.

The JustAPinch.com site was launched in April 2010 and already has grown to more than 250,000 members, averaging 25,000 new members per month. In its first full year, the site netted 26.6 million page views and amassed more than 52,000 user-generated recipes, and Comscore ranks it No. 1 in terms of engagement with women ages 34 to 45 across all food sites. (By comparison, it took Allrecipes.com 10 years to reach 46,000 recipes, and most were not user-generated.) The site was created by Hammond, who previously founded Publishing Group of America and oversaw the creation of American Profile, which enjoyed the second-largest magazine launch in U.S. history.

"Just A Pinch's metrics are very impressive, and I'm looking forward to being part of a talented, innovative team that is going to build on that momentum and drive those numbers higher," Balaban said. "Dan Hammond has done a tremendous job of taking lessons he learned from his old media success and transferring them to a new media platform."

Prior to her stints at Reader's Digest Association and Stewart Omnimedia, Balaban managed successful advertising sales initiatives for Conde Nast Publications, including for Vogue, Allure and Self magazines, and Rolling Stone and In Style.

In 2009, she was named Publisher of the Year by min magazine, a trade publication that covers the magazine industry, for her work at Every Day with Rachael Ray that broadened the magazine's appeal for potential advertisers.

About JustAPinch.com

JustAPinch.com is a true social medium built around recipes, with interaction through posting, rating, voting, testing, comments on all, chat groups, private messaging, and use of Facebook connect, Twitter and other third-party platforms. Home cooks use the site to swap and discuss thousands of "family-tested and -approved recipes," share cooking tips, earn blue ribbons, and print grocery coupons, all free. Premium-perk membership is $0.99/month or $10 per year. The site is owned by Franklin, Tenn.-based American Hometown Media, which was started by founder Dan Hammond in 2011 as a spinoff from his American Hometown Publishing company, owner of a network of community newspapers in Tennessee, Virginia and Oklahoma.

SOURCE Just A Pinch Recipe Club