Nielsen Business Media announced today that it is closing Editor & Publisher and Kirkus Reviews and selling eight other publications: Adweek, Brandweek, Mediaweek, The Clio Awards, Backstage, Billboard, Film Journal International and The Hollywood Reporter. The move comes as the publishing industry — news, books, magazines — flounders in response to market disruption caused by practically-free distribution via the Internet.
Paid Content (Guardian Newspapers property) lets us know the effort to sell the 108-year-old E&P had been in work for a year. (E&P was founded in 1901; in 1907, it merged with The Journalist, which was founded in 1884.)
The other shuttered publication, Kirkus Reviews, was founded in 1933. Its focus: book reviews. Yesterday’s announcement that two publishers are experimenting with withholding ebook distribution until after the hardcover illustrates the book industry’s reluctance to embrace friction-free distribution.
The NYT reports that AdWeek broke the story; the story was unavailable due to server overload due to poor URL coding at NYT (8.55 am Pacific). Note to AdWeek: tell your web devs to fix your incredibly horrible URL syntax:
http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/media
/e3icf90084764d1ef2d4ab9be4342d72e78
Update: E&P on the closure; Columbia Journalism Review with E&P’s Greg Mitchell
