There’s no art to find

ArtsProfessional, the magazine of news, information and features about management, development and administration of the arts has gone digital only with no paywall and no subscription, and funded entirely by advertising.

They say “[T]he rapid trend towards digital consumption, the 24-hour online news culture, the sharp contraction of the cultural sector …, the squeezing of arts organisations’ budgets … and the rising costs of print and postage have conspired against the economics of print publishing.”

Private Frazer has a couple of other appropriate quotes: “Making money is art.” (Andy Warhol); “Art is the elimination of the unnecessary.” (Picasso)

Less Ink on Less Paper

News from Hammersmith as Haymarket offload Nursery World and Printweek to the Mark Allen Group. The value of the sale (which will be of interest to Haymarket debt watchers), is not mentioned.

Printweek will be relaunched as a fortnightly. (Presumably called Print2weeks)

Jane Macken, md of Haymarket Business Media is quoted as saying, “The sale of the titles allows HBM to concentrate on its core markets in line with the company’s group growth strategy.“

That’s growth as in “growth (sic)”.

 

h/t to Mr X (I suspect that’s not his real name)

 

Absolute Pants

After 21 years the bottom has fallen out of the market for Lingerie Buyer, the magazine for everyone “trying to find out what is happening in the intimate apparel industry“.

As Private Frazer remains utterly ignorant of what’s happening in his own underwear, he is not likely to feel this loss of broader industry knowledge too keenly.

Marketing Weakly

Like the demise of Blockbuster, the surprise with the news that Marketing is likely to go monthly is more in the fact that it hadn’t closed years ago.

That a weekly controlled circulation title has survived this far into the decade deserves some sort of award, but at least we will now all be spared dozens of poly wrapped magazines clogging up the post room because they are addressed to people who left the company years previously.

Haymarket have not yet confirmed that Marketing will change frequency, but if by the end of 2013 either it or Centaur’s Marketing Week are still publishing every week, I’ll eat my sporran. The bigger question really is whether they will still be publishing at all.

Qube Flattened

To complete this week’s hat trick of print titles going ‘digital only’, Qube magazine – “proud to service the Facilities Management sector” (no, me neither) – has announced that its December issue was the last in the old, boring, fuddy-duddy ink on paper format.

It is venturing boldly into the future: “we are concentrating on our digital magazine and online presence that will give us more 21st century appeal and abilities”.

Bless.

 

 

[h/t to Norman for the link]

Press Passed

After just one edition, the quarterly print version of Press Gazette has been axed by Mike ‘Chuckles’ Danson. Back in May last year the publication announced that it was closing the weekly print magazine but would continue as a monthly and then, before the echo of the announcement had even died away, canned the monthly version in favour of a quarterly. Private Frazer described this as the new model for the death of print – not the guillotine, but the thousand little cuts.

Editor Dominic Ponsford writes about the latest decision:

In common with other B2B titles…, we have increasingly found … that readers want to access Press Gazette’s news and analysis digitally…While the production of a quarterly journal made great sense journalistically, the commercial case did not pan out as well as we had hoped.

Translation: no one wanted to buy the print edition and no one wanted to advertise in it.

In the Grauniad’s piece about the closure, Dominic is a wee bit more forthcoming:

Persuading journalists to pay a premium price for a print product is tough in a market like ours, which is saturated with free information. 

That ‘premium price’ mentioned was under £5 an issue.

Lower Pulse rate

Pulse (the GPs’ magazine as opposed to the dead Scottish listings title) has announced a drop in frequency from 36 times a year to monthly.

Our … research showed that 70 percent of our target audience did not want to receive print based magazines every week.

It would be interesting to know how many of them will actually want the print product every month.

No Bus Fare

The terminus has been reached for Jane’s Transport Finance magazine which chucked all the passengers off at the end of August.

“Recent [recent?] changes in the marketplace have resulted in the decision to end publication of all IHS Jane’s Transport Finance products and retire the product line including the magazine, website and award ceremony”

The euphemism ‘retire’ is one to be savoured, implying a gradual slow down, a gold watch and some declining years spent gardening. So much warmer and softer than ‘axed’ eh?

Worm Food

To everything there is a season, but don’t expect Garden Retail to be popping up next spring from the hole that Haymarket have just dug for it; that isn’t deep planting, it’s a burial.

 

Dangerous Structure

I hadn’t thought that there was much print product left for Centaur to close, but they have unbolted The Engineer magazine – next week’s issue will be the last.

As this email to the staff demonstrates, corporate bollocks is a finely developed skill in Poland Street, honed from years of practise of closing magazines. For connoisseurs of the genre, there are some particularly decent examples here, engaged with the brand, exciting times ahead, focused and that old favourite much better experience, but for connoisseurs of cynicism, the last line of the memo is truly world-class. Don’t worry about the magazine shutting down – just make sure you flog those ads!

As discussed, the final issue of The Engineer magazine will close .. on … 12^th July and after that point we will be solely focused on growing our events and online products. The majority of our readers now either use both print and online, or online only. …. We’re doing this in the knowledge that we can give all those in the industry who are engaged with our brand a much better experience via the very successful online parts of The Engineer. …

There are exciting times ahead and we are looking forward to the Engineer Awards in March …

 

We are however inviting advertisers to use the final edition to advertise, knowing that this final issue will get a lot of extra attention!