Because in January Editor & Publisher magazine will switch from weekly to monthly print publication and announced that it also would “significantly enhance” its Web site operation, it perhaps only natural for Web-based journalists to believe that the Web killed this weekly.
However, that belief isn’t true. E&P reduced its print publishing frequency due mainly to a severe loss of advertising revenues, a problem also present on its and its competitor’ Web sites. Earlier this week, our James Tailer outlined two of the major mistakes that E&P made with its print edition:
The Web had nothing to do with E&P no longer being able to afford to publish weekly. E&P‘s advertisers didn’t migrate to its Web site nor to its its competitors’ Web sites. E&P‘s publishers won’t be earning more revenues by switching their focus to the Web; they instead plan to reduce their printing & postal mail circulation costs to a point below where their advertising revenues revenues have plunged. A reduction in publication frequency from weekly to monthly might actually bring E&P’s existing ad rates in line with reality. Some weekly trade journals might have been killed by the Web, but E&P wasn’t one. The weekly editions of E&P were killed by mismanagement.
We’re glad that E&P intends to “significantly enhance” its Web site. A significantly enhancement shouldn’t be too hard at a site where the staff has cut to but a single person — the talented but overworked Carl Sullivan.
E&P goes — weakly
Vin Crosbie (who knows more about this than I do) says that the Web didn’t kill Editor & Publisher as a weekly. He blames by poor management by VNU. I confess, I haven’t read E&P since 1996. So, I was…