Since joining Wenner Media in January 2009 as its first chief digital officer—which includes helming such online brands as Rollingstone.com, Usmagazine.com and Mensjournal.com—Steven Schwartz has not been afraid to shake up the status quo to rally traffic to the sites. When Us Magazine’s former editor-in-chief Janice Min and her staff got hold of some raw footage of the infamous 1984 Pepsi commercial shoot that burned the late pop icon Michael Jackson’s hair and scalp, leading to his addition to painkillers, Schwartz released the video to the publication’s site the day photo stills from the shoot appeared in the print issue. And rather than just post the entire footage on the Web, Schwartz and his team edited it to make it user-friendly; they also superimposed captions on it to make sure online visitors would be able to follow what happened that fateful day. The video, which also went viral and was grabbed by nearly every top media outlet, became an online sensation, attracting 11 million unique visitors to Usmagazine.com.
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