Categories: Magazine Agonistes

On Conde Nast Shuttering Domino, And The Folly Of The Magazine Spin-off

Posted by: Jon Fine on January 28

Some years ago, when consumer spending was absolutely on fire, I was talking with a top magazine executive about Conde Nast’s Lucky magazine—a.k.a. "the magazine about shopping." As journalists sometimes...

Magazine Shutdowns, Magazine Layoffs, And The Looming Pullback In Automobile Advertising

Posted by: Jon Fine on November 19

In recent days, there have been layoffs at Forbes, Time Inc., Conde Nast Publications, Bauer Publishing, The Economist, and Hearst Magazines. In the past 24 hours, Time Inc’s Cottage Living...

Magazines And Web Strategy, Or The Lack Thereof

Posted by: Jon Fine on October 23

My pal and former boss, Ad Age Editor Jonah Bloom, came back from this month’s American Magazine Conference with some tart thoughts regarding the gap between what magazine publishers have...

CosmoGirl, Teen Magazines, And The Coming Media Shakeout The Economic Downturn Will Bring

Posted by: Jon Fine on October 10

Portfolio’s Jeff Bercovici breaks the news that Hearst Magazines is shuttering Cosmogirl. This marks what's just about the final chapter for the media bubble that briefly blew up in the...

Magazine Death Pool's Grim Reaper On What Market Woes May Mean For Mags

Posted by: Jon Fine on September 24

There is, you may have heard, much tumult in the financial markets. Ad Age had an interesting story this Monday on what the fallout for media may be, in terms...

Business 2.0 Finally Shuttered

Posted by: Jon Fine on September 05

Business 2.0 gets shuttered by Time Inc., and so the Grim Reaper claims another victim in ’07. This is actually an anticlimax at this point. Reportage about this pending move...

That Was Then, This Is Now, Ziff Davis Department

Posted by: Jon Fine on August 01

Bloomberg's Leon Lazaroff, August 1, 2006: Ziff Davis Holdings Inc., owner of PC magazine and Computer Gaming World, may sell itself in a transaction that analysts said might fetch more...

Street-Level Reporting At Its Finest. Or Not.

Posted by: Jon Fine on July 27

A few days ago I was walking in midtown Manhattan, and I caught sight of someone I know who's in a reasonably high-level position at National Geographic. Under ordinary circumstances...

The Incredible Shrinking Teen Category: Teen People Pulls An Elle Girl

Posted by: Jon Fine on July 25

Time Inc.’s Teen People shutting down as a magazine after its September issue; TeenPeople.com will live on. If this sounds familiar, well, it should, since Hachette’s Elle Girl did the...

Massive Layoffs At Vibe

Posted by: Jon Fine on July 11

Nat Ives of Ad Age confirms what we heard was slated to go down at 1 PM today: Twenty or so staffers of Vibe fired by the new management. On...

Elle Girl: Canary? Coal Mine?

Posted by: Jon Fine on April 04

Hachette Filipacchi Media US shutters Elle Girl as a print magazine; brand to live on the Web and via mobile content applications. Last year I (and everyone else that covered...

Shopping Mag Boomlet: See Ya!

Posted by: Jon Fine on March 28

Conde Nast kills men's shopping title Cargo, or, as we liked to call it, Boy Lucky. Shopping magazines were, until now, one of the next-great magazine categories, alongside the ubiquitous...

Magazine Circulation Bummer List

Posted by: Jon Fine on February 21

Magazines sell ads based on rate base. Rate base is circulation you guarantee to advertisers. If you miss rate base, your advertisers sort of have carte blanche to make your...

That Was Then . . .

Posted by: Jon Fine on January 12

Therre was a boom for media not so long ago, right? Right? Fast Company and Inc., then and now....

Conde Nast: Mary Berner Out

Posted by: Jon Fine on January 04

Mary Berner, former CEO of Conde Nast's Fairchild unit and current Group President of Conde Nast's Fairchild division, is leaving the company at the end of this month. Ms. Berner,...

Forbes: Circulation Woes, But At Least They're Not Alone

Posted by: Jon Fine on December 27

A report from Audit Bureau of Circulations, released just as the media world went into its annual Christmastime hibernation, found that Forbes incorrectly classified some circulation as paid and missed...

Radar Magazine Folds

Posted by: Jon Fine on December 14

So much for ambitious pop-culture plays in the magazine space: Radar magazine is folding. The November-December issue currently on newsstands will be its last. Staffers were informed of the news...