Parade, the Sunday magazine, may be getting ready to march out of Advance Publications — the Newhouse family’s media empire.
The company has quietly begun shopping the 73-year-old magazine to prospective buyers, according to reliable industry sources.
It comes at a time when Advance has been busy pruning its newspaper empire — cutting back daily print editions of the Times Picayune in New Orleans and slashing staff on papers in New Jersey, including the Star-Ledger.
Thanks to its distribution inside Sunday papers, Parade remains one of the largest-circulation publications in the country, with 32 million copies distributed in 750 newspapers each week, down from its peak circulation of 35 million reached in 2005. But it has trouble competing in the digital age.
In New York City, it appears in the New York Post and Staten Island Advance and generally lands in the biggest newpapers in the biggest cities, including the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Dallas Morning News, Boston Globe and Miami Herald.
Despite the freefall in Sunday newspaper circulation generally, Parade has managed to add new papers, in part because major metropolitan dailies — from Boston to Los Angeles — no longer produce their own Sunday magazines.
Its main rival is USA Weekend, which has a distribution of 23 million and appears in all Gannett-owned papers, as well as some others.
But like all print vehicles, the Sunday magazines have struggled for ad dollars.
Media Industry Newsletter had Parade’s ad-page tally at 177.44 through mid-June, down 10 percent. USA Weekend was down 15.9 percent, to 173.04, while American Profile, which goes to smaller markets in C and D cities, was down 11.7 percent to 191.42.
The New York Times Sunday Magazine, at 828.99 ad pages through mid-June, is down 6.1 percent.
When additional household readers are added into the mix, Parade has an estimated total audience of 54 million, according to MRI, which tracks print audience sizes.
Several years ago, it teamed up with Condé Nast food titles to launch Dash, which has distribution of 8.5 million, and in 2012 hired former Yahoo! executive Wayne Powers, who became president and publisher, in a bid to capture some digital revenue.
Parade also tried and failed to gain new readers with a teen title called React, which has been shut.
For years, when Condé Nast was a marginal operation, Parade was a virtual license to print money. But Parade has obviously fallen on tougher times lately as ad dollars, especially direct-response ads, migrate to digital.
The Sunday newspaper staple was started by Marshall Field III in 1941. The Newhouse family inherited it when it took over the old Booth Newspapers in Michigan in 1976.
Former Publisher Carlo Vittorini said that for a while after it was bought, Si Newhouse had sought to shut it down.
It peaked under long-time Editor-in-Chief Walter Anderson, who joined in 1980 and ran it for nearly 20 years — while the dictatorial Vittorini ran the business side.
Anderson, who would eventually add the president and CEO titles, began paying top writers — including Gail Sheehy, sportswriter Dick Schaap, man-about-town James Brady and Pulitzer Prize writers including Norman Mailer and David Halberstam — to its regular mix.
While that sort of line-up gave it prominence, its three-week publication lead time also led to some embarrassing gaffes — like the January 2008 cover story on Benazir Bhutto that appeared after she had been assassinated on Dec. 27, 2007, without a mention of her death.
One of its mainstay columns, which continues to this day, is Walter Scott’s Personality Parade, a pithy take on movie stars and celebrities in Q&A format that early on tapped into America’s growing fascination with the personal lives and gossip of celebrities. Today it is written by a rotating group of staffers.
Steven Newhouse, the son of Advance patriarch and President Donald Newhouse, and the nephew of Condé Nast’s retired but still titular figurehead, Si Newhouse, is the family member in charge these days. Maggie Murphy is the current editor-in-chief.
He referred Media Ink calls to Parade CEO Jack Haire, a longtime Time Inc. executive who succeeded Anderson in 2009.
“We don’t comment on rumors or speculation, but we are always in the market looking for opportunities,” said Haire.
In the Spin
SpinMedia, the music, celebrity and digital ad network, continues to bleed visitors and wallow in a sea of red ink.
CEO Dale Strang is now urging employees to quit goofing off and start coming in on time and stop leaving early, according to a staff memo.
A host of people have quit or been let go since the board gave former CEO Steve Hansen his walking papers.
Hansen had cut some staff, slicing payroll from 250 to 200 — but balked in September 2009 when the board demanded more.
Staffing has since been cut to around 135 — but it has not been enough to turn the network around.
It is still losing about $500,000 a month, one source estimated.
Strang said in the memo, “It is maddening beyond description to see offices that are empty in the late morning or early evening,” according to someone who saw the missive.
“Our company continues to lose money,” Strang confided in the memo, and said he wonders how he can ask the investors to continue to put money into new employees “when the ones we have can’t be relied on to work a full day.”
When reached by Media Ink, Strang said, “Is it such a slow news day that me asking my employees to work harder is an item? Shocking.”
Investors are said to have pumped in more than $100 million since the company, formerly known as BuzzMedia, launched.
As staff has been cut, it appears to be affecting traffic.
In April 2013, it was still pulling in 34,044,000 unique visitors across all platforms, according to comScore.
By April 2014, traffic had dropped 45 percent to 18,829,000 visitors.
About Time
Time Inc. continued to dip in its second day on the market.
The stock closed at 22.70, down 60 cents, or 2.6 percent.
Just as on its opening day, it dropped earlier, then climbed in late-day trading.
The company is expected to entice some of the stockholders to stick around by paying a handsome dividend.
CEO Joe Ripp said the board is expected to meet later in June to set the dividend rate.