Eulogy for MagWeek - MagazineWeek

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, August 1, 1993 by Keith J. Kelly

As much of the magazine publishing industry knows by now, our competitor, Magazine Week, suspended publication on June 7. My current employer, Cowles Business Media, bought the tabloid's subscriber list and a few other assets. So sudden was the shutdown that the staff never got to say good-bye to the readers.

Because I had been "over there" for four years, I have mixed emotions about MagWeek's demise. But if there is going to be a winner and a loser, I prefer to play for the winning team.

There are countless reasons why a magazine fails, and only a few reasons why a magazine succeeds. MagWeek was able to hang in there for five and a half years--in part because the magazine where I currently work pretended for a while it faced no challenger. Then FOLIO: tried Publishing News.

By the time the three-way category battle was over, the two weaker publications--Magazine Week and Publishing News--were gone. FOLIO: was stronger than ever, with a twice-monthly frequency, a terrific chief editor in Anne Russell and a dedicated, hustling staff. Cowles invested in editorial quality and won.

Which is not to say that MagWeek's final owner, Ken Fadner, didn't also make an attempt to invest in editorial. But the new guard was rebuilding at a time when a veteran team should have been charging forward. By the time Fadner unveiled his Glaser & Bernard redesign last October at the American Magazine Conference in Bermuda, it was already too late.

MagWeek did prove there is a need for timely news coverage of the industry. But the original owners, a group of circulation experts at the now-defunct Lighthouse Communications headed by Don Nicholas, simply never could execute their financing. The circulation when I left in January 1992 showed only 4,000 paid subs out of 13,000 total. They were giving away two subs for every one paid: That's no way to succeed in a tough ad market.