High-heeled women who appear to have leapt straight from the pages of a fashion magazine stream through the sparkling lobby of the Manhattan skyscraper that houses Hearst Corporation’s international headquarters. The sound of filtered rainwater trickling down a three-storey sculpture fills the atrium of the Norman Foster-designed tower as the women ride long escalators to a set of lifts that deposit them at the offices of magazines such as Cosmopolitan, Elle and Esquire.

In the executive suites on the 44th floor, the atmosphere is from another century. Frank Bennack, Hearst’s 79-year-old chief executive, walks down a quiet, wood-panelled corridor framed by an imposing portrait of the group’s founder, William Randolph Hearst, whose pioneering style built one of the world’s largest media empires. “The culture here has been a culture of innovation,” Mr Bennack says after he settles into a chair in a room furnished with Chinese vases, leather-backed volumes of Plutarch and a view of Central Park. “It doesn’t take people long to recognise that they get on-board with that change and innovation or they’re not going to be a part of the future of the company.”

For all his talk about the future, Mr Bennack will host New York’s media elite at the tower tomorrow to unveil Citizen Hearst, a documentary chronicling the company’s 125-year history.