Back in j-school, while we were studying how to game the magazine industry well enough to land a job in it — a funny thing happened on the way down that path, and it's called Jossip — we were told all about the "Seven Sisters" of magazines. These were the grand mamas (and not grandmothers) of the magazine publishing world, and included the names Redbook, Better Homes & Gardens, Family Circle, Good Housekeeping, McCall's (rebranded as Rosie, and then killed off), Women's Day, and the other huge circ title, Ladies' Home Journal. If you look at the marketplace now, however, you've seen the enormous readerships of these magazines decline (to still quite substantial levels) while titles like O, The Oprah Magazine, Domino, and Real Simple have moved in to take their place.

The exit of LHJ editor Diane Salvatore is, supposedly, a way to shake things up and stave off the slide in ad pages under a new regime. But Salvatore is being replaced with Parents EIC Sally Lee, who, while certainly deserving of compliments for her tenure in the industry, does not represent a sea change in leadership. Meredith Corp. is actually upping Lee to SVP/New York editorial director, giving her oversight not only of LHJ, but also Family Circle, Fitness, Ser Padres and American Baby.

And that's the problem.

Under Lee, it's unlikely any of those magazines will see much shift. There are no grand plans to revamp these titles. No scheme to point them in a new direction. No playbook in place to adapt them to the new ways readers consume magazines.

And that's unfortunate.

Just over a year ago, Meredith decided to close Child magazine, where circulation had fallen 18.5 percent in a year to 740k paid subscribers. Much of the blame was put on Cookie, the new Conde Nast title that took a more urban-sophisticate approach to parenting than Child ever did.

And that's where the trend is headed.

If nothing changes, Lee's Parents and Family Circle will continue to lose readers to more lively magazines like Cookie and Fit Pregnancy and to mommy digital offerings like Dooce and Babble. And Ladies' Home Journal, once the epicenter of homemaking culture that rebranded itself as a career woman's book, will not escape this fate.