The journalist Jane Reed, who has died aged 84, exerted as great an influence over the lives of women in the UK during the emergence of the feminist movement in the last 30 years of the 20th century as many others with a higher profile.
She was a brilliant editor of Woman’s Own for a decade from 1970, turning it into what was claimed to be the most authoritative magazine for women in the English-speaking world, and ended her formal career as one of the executives who called the shots at Times Newspapers.
At a personal level she inspired hundreds of girls to raise both their expectations in life and their career aspirations through a combination of her own fearless, can-do daring and much kindly encouragement. “Sometimes you have to be scared by your own bravery,” she would tell school students and younger female colleagues.
She had a visionary sense of what could be achieved and she would set out to realise it. More importantly, she made those around her think harder and more imaginatively.
At Woman’s Own, she was credited with introducing the concept of “add-on” supplements in magazines and having ideas such as staging an annual “world’s biggest jumble sale” to raise money for Save the Children – in 1978 funds were boosted when she somehow persuaded Peter Sellers to contribute a pair of his silk pyjamas (with a lipstick stain on the sleeve) and Sophia Loren to donate a dress.
In 1973, she introduced the magazine’s Children of Courage awards to recognise the achievements of exceptional children, now an established charity with annual presentations, which has honoured hundreds in its 52-year history.
“She was always a lot more than a knit-your-own-royal-family type of journalist,” according to a fellow magazine editor. “She would come up with what seemed like wild ideas and if she couldn’t inspire people to make them real, well then she would just beat them into submission.”
In the world of women’s magazines through which she rose, Reed played a skilful part in translating the angry aggression of much early feminism into something comprehensible to the mass market, understanding precisely the importance of the part magazines could play in making what was then known as “women’s liberation” meaningful to their readers.
In an article in the Guardian in 1982, by which time she was editor in chief of Woman – one of the top five women’s weekly magazines, reaching a total of six million paying customers – she wrote of the seemingly rapid change in the tone of women’s magazines from a bland acceptance to determined questioning.
“On the shop floor in the 1970s it was painfully slow. We had to weave it carefully into the subtle blend of escapism, support and self-improvement in the face of hostilities from the emerging feminist on the one hand and the endangered traditionalist at the other. A strident and successful campaign for tax equality sat side by side with a sexy bikini feature and ‘six unusual salads’,” she wrote.
Reed also had a shrewd comprehension of the commercial value of the magazine market, its relatively economical advertising rates and its consequent attractive profitability, which would inevitably lead her into management.
In 1979, following her stint at Woman’s Own, she spent two years as publisher of the women’s group of monthly magazines owned by the International Publishing Company (IPC), then part of the Mirror Group; then in 1983 – after a year running Woman – she became assistant managing director of IPC’s specialist education and leisure magazines and then managing director of the IPC’s Holborn Publishing group, which produced music magazines including Melody Maker and NME.
The publisher Rupert Murdoch noticed Reed’s stylish confidence and reputedly offered her editorship of the News of the World magazine, Sunday, but in 1985 she surprised the magazine industry by accepting the post of managing editor of Eddy Shah’s Today newspaper.
She started there, initially with responsibility for features, before the launch in the spring of 1986 and remained in that post until 1989. She loved the transfer to newspapers, with its hand-to-mouth culture in comparison with the more leisurely pace of magazine production, and won plaudits for having a calm head in the chaos that engulfed Today, particularly in its early years. “At Today even the bad times were good,” Reed commented.
In 1987, Murdoch bought the newspaper and added it to his News International (NI) empire, and two years later he appointed Reed to the post of NI director of corporate affairs, where she remained until 2000. One of her first tasks was to navigate NI through the merger of its Sky Television with British Satellite Broadcasting in 1990. She was appointed CBE in 2000.
From 2002 to 2022 she was a director of Times Newspaper Holdings. She was highly successful in this difficult post as a tough negotiator who could hold her own, was never intimidated and who always made her own forthright views quite clear.
Although small in stature, she had a commanding presence and was regarded with awe by the newspaper bigwigs who worked with Murdoch. One colleague recalled the impact she made, speaking with wit and articulacy, to the international financial elite collected at the high-powered Sun Valley conference in the US.
It was a considerable achievement for a woman whose mother wanted her to become a secretary. She was born in Letchworth, Hertfordshire, the second daughter of William Reed, a draughtsman who died when Jane was five, and his wife, Gwendoline (nee Plaskett), who worked in sales. The children were sent as boarders to the Royal Masonic school on their father’s death and Jane remained there until she was 18.
She was an accomplished violinist and artist and enrolled briefly at St Martin’s School of Art in London before taking what was supposed to be a part-time magazine job. She worked for a number of titles, including Honey, of which she was deputy editor, before joining Woman’s Own in 1965. During her subsequent editorship, the magazine overtook Woman to become the best selling in the field.
Among her many commitments, Reed was president of the Media Society (1995), a member of the Royal Society’s Committee on the Public Understanding of Science (1986-96), a trustee of the National Literacy Trust (1992-2016) and of the Media Trust (1994-2014), and a member of Nuffield Council for Bio-Ethics (1991-94) and of the editorial board of the British Journalism Review (2004-12). She helped establish the St Katharine and Shadwell Trust, a grant-making charity, in 1990, and was a trustee (1992-2009).
Reed was treated for ovarian cancer in her 20s, and because she was thus unable to have children, her elder sister, Anna, offered to share her three. Her partner for 30 years was Michael Bird, a magazine publishing executive; the couple chose not to marry and maintained separate homes, 10 minutes apart.
Reed was predeceased by Michael and by her sister. She is survived by her nieces, Laura and Sarah, and her nephew, Alex.
• Jane Barbara Reed, editor, publisher and media executive; born 31 March 1940; died 27 February 2025
