More Tough Times In The Print Industry

The decision of publishing company Conde Nast to shut down GOURMET magazine after more than 60 years is another bad sign of the problems in the publishing industry. Print media is suffering a terrible decline in sales both due to the bad economy as well the information competition from the Internet. High publication prices haven't helped either.

But the problems for GOURMET magazine are the same as nearly all publications right now. Rapidly declining sales and less subscriptions. Unfortunately, GOURMET joins other publications that have failed just this year including MODERN BRIDE, BLENDER the edgy music magazine, ANN ARBOR NEWS, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER, ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS the oldest newspaper published in Colorado, HALLMARK magazine for fans of the greeting cards and other products, TRADER MONTHLY, PRIVATE AIR, TRUMP, CORPORATE LEADER, CIGAR REPORT, DOMINO which is another Conde Nast publication dealing with home decor, COUNTRY HOME which was a spin-off from BETTER HOMES & GARDENS and JPG which relied on reader submitted photo content for publication.

In addition to these publication losses some publications are in deep trouble such as MAD magazine in which Time Warner cut-back to a quarterly publication and dropped two spin-off publications and the MAD TV show was canceled by FOX. With MAD cut-back so deeply, the publication is probably just hanging on for dear life and could be gone within a year or two. MAD is the lone surviving American humor and satire magazine. Other competitors such as CRACKED, CRAZY, SICK, NATIONAL LAMPOON, HARPOON and others have died off over the years.

The fact of the matter is that the economy will further reduce the number of magazines on the market by hundreds more before a recovery takes hold. There may be a recession in the country, but there's a real depression in the print industry.