Industry Loses a Long-Time Voice: Editor & Publisher

Today, this terse announcement appeared at one of the blog sites, Fitz & Jen, that I regularly check on behalf of Bnet Media:

"After years of covering the death of newspapers, we here at Fitz & Jen got to experience it first-hand this morning. The Nielsen Company has made the decision to cease operations of Editor & Publisher (E&P) in its 125th year."

A century and a quarter is a long time for any publication, and I find it sobering that my long career in media has spanned about a third of E&P's run. According to the post, bloggers Mark Fitzgerald and Jennifer Saba will continue covering the industry going forward, if not at E&P, somewhere.

I hope so. As a fellow spectator and commentator to the ongoing train wreck that is our traditional media industry, I've felt a sense of comradeship with Fitz & Jen. I wish them well.

This is the time of year when closings start getting announced; even more so in the first quarter of the new year. Expect that when the toll is totaled up, hundreds of U.S. magazine titles will have perished over the past year.

Thank you to Bnet's Kirsten Korosec for alerting me to this story.