<i>George</i> Magazine Is Folding

George, the politics and lifestyle magazine founded by the late John F. Kennedy Jr., is closing down one year after a remake failed to lift the magazine's sagging fortunes. The last issue will appear in March as a special tribute to Kennedy.

The announcement was made Thursday by Jack Kliger, president of Hachette Filipacchi Magazines, a division of the French conglomerate Lagardere SCA. The magazine's 39 staffers will receive severance packages.

Kliger said Hachette had put "well over" $10 million into the magazine over the past year and only anticipated the losses to rise as the advertising market softens. "I deeply regret this decision but it is unavoidable," Kliger said.

Hachette faced a dilemma over what to do with George magazine, which was already struggling when Kennedy died in a plane crash in the summer of 1999, since closing George right away could have seemed disrespectful so soon after Kennedy's death.

Hachette ended up taking full control of George that fall, buying out the half-interest it didn't already own from the Kennedy estate and installing former Money magazine editor Frank Lalli at the helm.

Even though circulation rose some 25 percent over the past year, Kliger said the poor response from advertisers, combined with a slowing economy and worsening advertising climate, made a decision to close the magazine inevitable.

Kliger also acknowledged in an interview, however, that the magazine's close association with its late founder also played a role in making a relaunch of the publication a difficult proposition.

"There was a product that went out beyond John, but the advertisers had always associated it with John Kennedy," Kliger said. "It was a political/lifestyle magazine, but we had a hell of a ghost to always be compared to."

Even before Kennedy's death, readers and advertisers had often puzzled over George's unusual premise of combining celebrity coverage with serious political issues. Despite a considerable revamp under Lalli, the response from advertisers was poor.

For the first 11 months of 2000, the magazine's advertising pages, a main gauge of health for a periodical, fell 40 percent to 251 pages compared to the same period a year ago, according to the Publishers Information Bureau.