Jenna Bush Hager Hired To Bring Youthful Flair To ‘Southern Living’ Magazine

Jenna Bush Hager may not live in the South at the moment, but the editors of Southern Living magazine think she’ll make a perfect fit at the publication anyway.

Southern Living has announced that it’s hiring Today show correspondent and former First Daughter Jenna Bush Hager to serve as an editor at large, part of what media experts see as an effort to attract younger readers. The New Yorker reported that the average reader of Southern Living is 51 years old.

As the New YorkTimes‘ Media Decoder noted, Jenna Bush Hager will be something of a carpetbagger for the magazine, as she’ll be doing her writing from north of the Mason-Dixon line.

Lindsay Bierman, Southern Living’s editor in chief, said that Jenna Bush Hager will bring the right enthusiasm for the magazine and its readers. In the past few years Southern Living has seen a drop in its newsstand sales, shrinking 27 percent to 137,962 copes in June 2012. Southern Living has a devoted following among middle-aged Southern women, the New York Times noted.

“I did get the sense that her heart is still very much in the South,” Mr. Bierman said. “I felt her passion for the South was going to translate into what she would do for Southern Living.”

Though she may live up North now, Bush Hager said she feels right at home with Southern Living.

“I’m kind of like a homesick Texan living in New York,” Jenna Bush Hager said. “I grew up reading this magazine. My mom had a subscription. It’s something that I’ve always known about.”