Issue 60 of Scrapbook Inspirations (on sale 13 November 2009) will be the last monthly edition of the magazine.

As the Christmas issues hit the newsstand we can expect a slew of closures to be announced. Another Merry Christmas for the magazine industry!

From the Guardian:

Reed Business Information is to make 18 staff redundant as part of a restructuring that will include the closure of 130-year old Contract Journal.

This follows the pattern of death by a thousand cuts for RBI.

Just when you thought that RBI were getting dull again, up pops this from Press Gazette:

Ian Smith, the chief executive of business publisher Reed Elsevier, has resigned with immediate effect after little more than eight months in the post.

Reed Elsevier announced that Smith resigned “with mutual agreement” and has stepped down today from the company’s board.

Elsevier chief executive Erik Engstrom has been appointed as his replacement.

A company spokesman told Reuters that Smith had been the wrong man for the current economic climate.  “Ian and the board decided it wasn’t the right role for him in the current economic circumstances… There is no disagreement on strategy.” [my emphasis]

I love it when everyone agrees about everything, don’t you?

Italy magazine – “Your Bridge to Italy” – has gone ‘online only’. Ciao!

Dennis Publishing has thrown in its hand with Inside Poker magazine.

A totally unsubstantiated rumour (my favourite kind) pops into the inbox. Apparently a publisher of puzzle titles is having a wee bit of trouble making its sums add up. More details welcomed from anyone with inside information.

A neat little summary in PaidContent on some of the bigger publishers’ financials.

• NatMags: a pre-tax loss of £42.8m in 2008 – compared with a £10.8m profit in 2007
• Haymarket: pre-tax profits down from £8m in 2007 to £4.5m in 2008
• Reed Business Information: Profits fell 47% in H109 to £39m.
• UBM: In the first half of 2009, UBM’s profits fell by more than a quarter year on year to £48m.
• Centaur: First-half profits fell by 88% year on year to £1.7m.
• Euromoney: The DMGT-owned publisher has said it will meet its 2008/09 profit target of £57m for the year to 30 September.
• Future: For its H109, announced in May, Future saw its profits fall 70% to £1.2m.
• Economist Group: For the year to March 31, operating profits were 26% higher year on year at £56m.

Another email from our person on the inside regarding the sweetness and light that currently surrounds ‘our’ industry body…

“The announcement of the impending departure of Chief Operating Officer Sarah Tunstall after barely 15 months in the job gives us another glimpse into the increasingly surreal world of the PPA. Not that Ms Tunstall’s departure was unexpected, given her role as wing-man to former PPA Top Gun Jonathan Shephard. (He, you will recall, was shot down in flames last month following 18 months of re-structuring PPA in the image of his former domicile, The Independent Schools Council.) Even the wily Tunstall would have found it hard to distance herself from Shephard’s disastrous tenure, so her move to pastures new is hardly a surprise. No, the real ‘Take My Breath Away’ moment comes in reading the PPA press release announcing her timely deployment of the ejector seat. A curious ‘bigging up’ of her new employer is followed by a swooning eulogy to the Sainted Sarah, making one begin to wonder if PPA hasn’t shifted into some kind of parallel universe, where whitewash is the common currency and post-rationalisation the dominant orthodoxy

“Sarah has worked tirelessly on a broad range of PPA activities” gushes the press release, failing to mention that much of that tireless activity was engaged in working with Shephard to divest PPA of its seasoned industry-savvy staff and replace them with old chums from the ISC.

“Her greatest achievement was recruiting the team to run the FIPP World magazine Congress”, an event, it might be added, that took up a huge chunk of PPA’s time for almost a year, to the detriment of the organisation’s core activities, and has left in its wake a greatly expanded event team responsible for a reduced number of PPA events.

And finally, the gloriously risible “Her dedication to all things PPA has been legendary”. Legendary? Really? Some might feel that 15 months is barely enough time to get ones knees under the table, let alone become the stuff of legend.

Meanwhile, a new terror haunts senior figures throughout the publishing industry – that the next phone call might be from a recruitment consultant inviting them to apply for the role of PPA Chief Executive.  Poisoned chalice, anyone?”

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For those of you wanting to get some background on this, I commend the following earlier postings to your attention:

• P P A thetic
• Clear as Mud
• Man the lifeboats
• Man Overboard

The departure of Centaur’s chairman and the company’s rejection of a bid from Critical Information Group may well be entirely unrelated, but it’s clear that the company probably won’t see out much of 2010 with its current ownership arrangements.

CIG apparently describes itself as “a company formed to acquire and consolidate media companies and businesses”.

I wonder how many more jobs will be ‘consolidated’ out of Centaur if and when CIG move in?

A lovely email from the fragrant Eric Verdon-Roe arrives in Private Frazer’s inbox:

Dear PPA member,

I am contacting you today in order that you are aware of a news story published in the print version of this week’s issue of Media Week, which stated that certain PPA members were to “sever ties” with the organisation. The story relates to ongoing negotiations PPA is conducting with APA and AOP.

The publication has since acknowledged that the story in print is incorrect [...] Subsequent liaison … resulted in an amended version of the story being published online (http://www.mediaweek.co.uk/news/945573/AOP-loosen-ties-PPA/)…

Talks are progressing with both APA and AOP but the situation is not yet fully resolved. We will provide a full briefing at the earliest possible opportunity.

It seems a little over the top to feel you have email the entire PPA database to deny a story in a magazine that few of us bother to read, so let’s see what comes out in the next couple of weeks. Even with the PPA sanctioned amendments to the Media Week article it seems quite clear that AOP is seeking to distance itself from its host.  (“The two bodies are negotiating over plans for the AOP to have control over its own finances and corporate governance.”)

Given the PPA’s troubles, is this the AOP making sure it won’t get dragged down with the ink on paper guys?