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Newspaper industry

Editor and Publisher closes after 125 years

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Editor and Publisher, the journalist publication of record, will cease both print and online publication at the end of this year. The announcement made earlier today after its parent company The Nielsen Co. informed staffers of its decision.

Romensko posted the announcement from Greg Farrar, President, Nielsen Business Media:

Today, we announced that Nielsen Business Media has reached an agreement with e5 Global Media Holdings, LLC, a new company formed jointly by Pluribus Capital Management and Guggenheim Partners, for the sale of eight brands in the Media and Entertainment Group, including Adweek, Brandweek, Mediaweek, The Clio Awards, Backstage, Billboard, Film Journal International and The Hollywood Reporter. e5 Global Media Holdings has also agreed to acquire our Film Expo business, which includes the ShoWest, ShowEast, Cinema Expo International and CineAsia trade shows.

In addition, we’ve made the decision to cease operations for Editor & Publisher and Kirkus Reviews.

This move will allow us to strengthen investment in our core businesses â?? those parts of our portfolio that have the greatest potential for growth â?? and ensure our long-term success. We remain committed to building our trade show group and affiliated brands. These assets continue to be a key part of The Nielsen Company’s overall portfolio and we strongly believe they are positioned to grow as the economy recovers. In addition, we’ll continue to assess the strategic fit of our remaining portfolio of publications.

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Comments 14

  1. One more unmistakable sign of the continuing disintegration of the newspaper industry. Very sad.

  2. Wow. Just when you think you’ve heard it all. This one is a bit of a stunner. I guess we should have seen it coming when they deemed that Dave Astor wasn’t necessary (which, of course, we know he WAS E&P). And with the slide of the industry falling into the ocean I guess it was inevitable…But still…

    I got my job at the Rocky through an E&P ad years ago. It always had a special place in my heart I suppose.

    The thing I’ve become increasingly tired of is the corporate speak of these press releases about the news industry. “These parts of our portfolio”. Really? They aren’t parts of your “portfolio”, they’re people with families and careers and hopes and dreams who are giving you great work and needed insight into the world of the newspaper industry, an industry that is the foundation of democracy. But you know what they say (with apologies to Stephan Pastis) it’s futile to cast your pearls before swine.

  3. The announcement took me by surprise as well. I started reading the magazine when I started college – always turning directly to the Dave’s syndicate section.

    What a shame.

  4. I had a subscription for several years in college. Very sad.

  5. I just deleted their url from my bookmarks list.

    What a lovely Christmas present for the folks who have worked so long and hard to make E&P the voice of the newspaper industry for so many years. Hope the owners of Neilsen sleep well over the holidays.

  6. Wow. If this isn’t a sign.

    My mother used to work for a company that dealt with newspaper advertising and every year E&P came out with a guide to all syndicated material–comics, columns and editorial cartoons–and she would bring a copy home for me. I still have them in my studio. I used to pour through them to see the new strips and dream.

    Sadly, as evidenced, the dream of newspaper syndication is almost dead.

  7. When E&P listed my feature in their Syndicate Directory I took that as a sign that I had finally “arrived”. It will be sorely missed.

  8. My frustration is the E&P (in which I had been both published and quoted) failed to adapt — blogs and web sites like this were also spreading syndie news, Romenesko helped spread newsroom news — they were no longer the only place to get that information, but they clung to some outmoded ways of keeping their franchise. The added value of the print version was minimal, but they failed to make their on-line edition interactive. No way to comment on articles on the main site, no way to contact writers of those articles — guest articles used a newsroom email address. All they offered were endless entreaties to “tweet us” or visit blogs that disappeared like morning frost. It was like they gave it away but discouraged engagement at the same time.

    It’s not a sign of the disappearance of newspapers. It’s a sign of how, if you don’t get it right, you don’t get a second chance. In print, offer extras. On line, encourage (meaningful) engagement. It’s not rocket science. It’s more like emergency medicine.

  10. With the exception of Dave Astor’s syndication writing, E&P was always far short of great: it was stodgy, old-fashioned and bland to the extreme.

    As bad as it was, though, there doesn’t seem to be anything poised to replace it.

  11. Sad news, I remember I discovered some old issues of E&P in a local library (only God knows how they get there) that was the first time I saw some cartoons of Oliphant, Borgman (when he won the Thomas Nast award) Benson, Greenberg… after that I was always hunting for new issues, of course, the best part was Dave Astor section, I still have some of the interviews and reviews he did in my clips files, thanks Dave.

    I’m glad we have TDC, thanks Allan

  12. Times are tough for multi-billion-dollar investment corporations.

    E&P was ruined once it started being bought and sold this decade. I’d like to see a couple of the E&P guys start their own similar publication. If they don’t, somebody will. Just because a major corporation shuts down one of it’s companies, it doesn’t mean there isn’t a market for it. Their decisions aren’t made based on silly realities like that.

  13. E and P was getting to be less and less. Dave was such a huge part of it for us.Still..it was the only publication of it’s kind. I’ll miss it. Of course, I miss what the business once was.

  14. My dad wrote freelance for them in the early 40s. I’ll take issue with Ted in that Greg Mitchell did his level best to subversively insert or point to stories buried or overlooked by the corporate press during the Bush nightmare.

    I saw the departure of David Astor was certainly the writing on the wall.

    I wish all their staffers the best.

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