The bankrupt Tribune Co. has become the latest newspaper publisher to pull the plug on a monthly magazine.
The staff of LA, Los Angeles Times Magazine got the word yesterday that the June 3 edition will be the last.
The current monthly lauched four years ago, but the 138-year-old paper has long published its own LA Times magazine.
At least seven full-time staffers, including Editor-in-Chief Nancie Clare and Creative Director Rip Georges are exiting.
Adios
Mort Zuckerman’s Daily News is bidding “adios” to its weekly Spanish-language supplement, Hora Hispana.
A spokesman confirmed the weekly is shutting down but said the paper is still publishing a monthly called Viva.
Three people were laid off as a result of the shutdown, including editors Maite Junco and Rodolfo Quebleen, as well as sales rep Jose Santiago.
Manifest destiny
Advance Publications, the media empire controlled by the Newhouse family that owns Condé Nast, continues to make bets with its $500 million in-house venture fund.
Fairchild Fashion Media, Advance’s business media division that publishes Women’s Wear Daily, said it was buying Fashion Networks International from its founders Christian Remrod and Elin Kling.
The company, which was founded in Finland, is known for its NowManifest, a curated blog portal for the fashion world that has about 1.2 million unique monthly visitors.
Remrod will join Fairchild as a managing director. In most past deals, whenever Advance Chairman S.I.
Newhouse, Jr. and brother Donald, president of Advance, acquired companies, they insisted previous owners exit.
It’s just another signal that the old guard is gradually ceding ground and the new generation of the family-controlled media giant is doing business differently. Deal terms were not disclosed.
Time Inc. re-ups
There are more signs that new Time Inc. CEO Laura Lang is not going to turn a laser focus on the editors as she tries to reshape Time Inc. for the digital world.
Larry Hackett, managing editor of People who saw his old contract expire in January, is the latest top editor to renew at the nation’s largest publisher.
Last week, Media Ink reported that Time magazine’s top editor, Rick Stengel, had also renewed his deal.
Both editors are believed to have signed new contracts that last for two years, according to insiders. That’s a bit of a change from past contracts, which traditionally ran for three years.
Two years is now the norm for Time Inc. execs. It is not clear if this is the result of an edict handed down by Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes — or something that Time Warner is applying across the board in all its divisions.
Pump it up
Men’s Fitness, faced with a slump in sales that caused it to miss its rate base last year, is taking on a new editorial mission with the issue that hits this month.
Parent company American Media Inc. is pumping $1 million into its effort to jump-start the magazine.
New Editor-in-Chief Michael De Medeiros, who joined in January after working on Toronto-based Maximum Fitness, unveiled a redesign this month that includes a larger trim size and heavier stock paper inside and on the cover in its seemingly eternal quest to overtake its larger archrival, Rodale’s Men’s Health, the category leader.
Men’s Fitness has been without a permanent editor-in-chief since editorial director Seth Kelly left to join the Ultimate Fighting Championship after AMI decided not to continue to publish the UFC’s monthly magazine because it wasn’t making it any money.
The contract to publish the UFC magazine was ultimately picked up by Sweden’s Bonnier Corp. which lured Men’s Fitness publisher Larry Menkes to rejoin Kelly.
In the second half of 2011, Men’s Fitness once again missed its 600,000 copy rate base — the amount of circulation it promises to advertisers.
Its monthly circulation average slipped to 578,923, which was down by 3.5 percent from a year earlier, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
In a rarity in the men’s fitness mag world, the newest edition of the fitness mag features a woman on the cover, former NFL Baltimore Ravens cheerleader and current George Clooney squeeze of the moment, Stacy Keibler.