Disappearing Ink

Ping! The inbox at private.frazer@hotmail.co.uk receives an unsubstantiated rumour (my favourite kind):

According to my correspondent, INK Publishing plans to make editorial/design people redundant as it prepares to close Voyager, Yeah Baby! and CNBC Business.

Voyager and YeahBaby! are the inflight magazines of respectively BMI and BMI Baby. With the BMI takeover by BA, the brands and the magazines are flying south.

CNBC Business is a monthly that used to be called CNBC European Business and was Ink’s attempt to get a business title on the newsstands to rival Businessweek. CNBC have apparently pulled the plug on the magazine and ad revenues alone aren’t enough to sustain it.

Confirmation or rebuttals to the usual address…

Closure by Design

Hot on the heels of Press Gazette  going quarterly, Progressive Media are closing idFX “the only source for professional interior design inspiration“.

[thanks to FeaturesExec's Media Bulletin]

Hold the front page

With the classic distraction technique beloved of magicians and publishing companies who are closing down print products, Press Gazette trumpets its new weekly email edition (sorry, “weekly magazine”. Sorry, “weekly digital edition”).

It’s only as you read down that you realise that the monthly print version is no more:

Following the launch of the weekly edition, the print title is to become a quarterly “review” style publication.

This is the new model for the death of print – not the guillotine, but the thousand little cuts.

1:00pm update

The move to quarterly publication seems to have been a rather sudden innovation. Three weeks ago Dominic Ponsford wrote this:

While Press Gazette Journalism Weekly will be largely news-based – Press Gazette’s monthly print edition will remain the place for anyone seriously interested in journalism to read the best exclusive features, investigations, insight and analysis about our industry.

Self-confessed Lawyers

There is one fewer lawyer in the world (the magazine publishing world that is) as The European Lawyer has ‘joined forces’ with The Global Legal Post.

Before: two magazines; after: one; so I would, suggest, your honour, that that’s ‘joined forces’ in the sense of ‘closed’.

Glass half empty

Time gentlemen please!  After 140 years the Brewers Guardian is abandoning its print edition to go online-only.

 

Abandon Ship

Given the breeze blowing in the Channel it’s somehow appropriate that Fast Ferry International has dropped anchor for the final time.

In this case – and in this case only – you are allowed to talk about a ‘perfect storm’.

Goodnight All

IHS have announced the closure of Jane’s Police Review after 118 years of publishing.

In fact it’s not just the magazine that is getting retired:

the company … will be stopping publication of all the Police Review products …  including the magazine, website, police handbooks and the Gala Awards

Don’t have nightmares, do sleep well.

Lack of Care

And another RBI print title discovers that the world is a cold and friendless place as it is announced that Community Care is to close.

Publishing director Trevor Parker said: “The upheaval in the public sector has seen advertisers question the value of print advertising [and] print recruitment revenues falling by 86 per cent in the last five years”

Early Retirement

Tweet

It’s proving to be a hard winter for pensions titles. Following on from the FT’s axing of Pensions Management, today’s post brings a copy of an email from Nick Rapley, MD of Incisive:

After much consideration we have decided to discontinue publishing Global Pensions and ETFM. [Exchange Trade Funds Magazine - but you knew that already didn't you.]

There are various cyclical and structural challenges at play which combined make the continuation of these brands untenable.

If any of you live next door to a pensions magazine, it might be worth popping round to check if they’re okay.

[Thanks to John for the lead on this]

Uncharitable

New Statesman have decided that charity doesn’t begin at home and have axed Charity Insight, the controlled circulation, advertising-supported (I know, I know) title they launched just last October.

The editor writes:

As many of you know – or have heard on the grapevine – Charity Insight is to close. … the current economic climate combined with the company re-focusing its direction within other areas of the business means … the issue that is due to land on your desks any day now will be the last one.

Hat tip to John for this news.