The newspaper will revamp to focus on politics, business and investigative reporting. The newspaper's Thursday edition announced the layoffs and said the last sports section would appear Friday. A new print edition will be launched Monday.

Among those let go was the newsroom leader, Managing Editor David Jones. The newspaper announced several management changes, though it's not clear who will oversee the newsroom operation. Christopher Dolan was appointed Wednesday as national politics editor and Brett Decker as editorial page editor.

"As I am sure everyone knows, the magazine publishing industry as a whole is severely challenged, and because of that, we have decided to exit the magazine business and will cease publishing them by the end of this year," said Cyma Zarghami, president of Nickelodeon/MTVN Kids and Family Group said in an internal memo, according to Mediaweek.

Radio & Records, a major music industry trade publication founded in 1973, and Performing Songwriter, a Nashville-based magazine established in 1993, are closing, their owners announced Wednesday (June 3). Both covered a wide variety of musical genres, including country, and attributed the closures to the current economic climate. R&R, headquartered in Los Angeles, was acquired in 2006 by VNU, a company that also owned the predominant music trade magazine, Billboard, as well as the Hollywood Reporter and ACNielsen. VNU changed its name to the Nielsen Company in 2007.

According to a plan announced Friday (May 22), two magazines will fold: Today's Christian Woman and the Campus Life College Guide, which targets Christian undergrads. CTI will also cease to publish Glimpses, a worship bulletin insert with stories from Christian history, and Church Office Today, a bi-monthly newsletter read by church administrators.

The moves, which reduce CTI staff numbers by 22 percent to 108 employees, mark the latest attempt to cut costs at Carol Stream, Ill.-based CTI. In January, the organization shuttered two other magazines -- Marriage Partnership and Ignite Your Faith -- and sold a third, Today's Christian.

President and Publisher Harold Smith called the latest actions "necessary."

"We find ourselves -- as does our industry -- in the midst of a perfect publishing storm," Smith said in a written statement. "The impact on employees who are truly gifted -- and the impact on the church as a whole -- is a sobering reality for me and the entire CTI team that remains."

The final print editions for those cities will hit the streets this week.

"It is an unpleasant task to discontinue print in those two cities - and to lay off the good people who worked hard to make them profitable - but I believe it is the wise business decision to make," Chief Executive Officer and President Steve Hannah said in a memo to employees Monday.

The association trimmed 39 positions this afternoon in response to the downturn in the industry, with 43 staffers remaining. In a memo to employees, President and CEO John Sturm wrote the steps were necessary and were taken at the direction of the board. "To be direct, industry economics compelled this round of staff reductions - to ensure we remain an affordable value to our members," he wrote.

Sturm also said the association is looking to further reduce member dues.

• Yahoo will cut nearly 700 jobs after reporting a weak Q1.
• Media General is cutting 300 jobs.
• The Sun-Times Media Group is cutting jobs in an attempt to cut payroll by 15%.
• The New York Post says Hachette Filipacchi implemented 6& pay cuts for all overtime-exempt employees and 3% cuts on all hourly employees.
• The San Francisco Chronicle is cutting 90 to 100 driver jobs.
• The Chicago Tribune has made cuts - 53 editorial employees have left.
• NPR has cut 13 jobs.
• Disney has cut 1,700 positions at its theme parks.
• Phoenix Media, which publishes the Boston Phoenix, has cut six positions.

After careful consideration, we have decided to close GeoCities later this year. We'll share more details this summer. For now, please sign in or visit the help center for more information.

“We went as far as we could in a difficult environment,” said an Alpha Media spokeswoman, Nora Haynes.

About 30 people will leave the company as a result of the magazine's closing, she said.

Alpha also is combining its magazine Maxim with Maxim.com, which means a few staff changes and, potentially, more layoffs. Joe Levy, the editor in chief of Blender, will become editor in chief of the combined Maxim and Maxim.com; Jay Woodruff, formerly editor in chief of Maxim Digital, will become chief content officer of the operation.

Blender has been publishing since 2001, featuring music reviews, recurring features like "greatest songs ever," and articles on Ludacris and Radiohead. It is aimed at young men and its covers have tended to feature female singers, like Fergie and Nicole Scherzinger of the Pussycat Dolls, in come-hither poses.

STARLOG.com has relaunched in beta! As a part of our massive digital initiative, STARLOG.com has returned to the web to bring you the best original content pertaining to the worlds of Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Comic Entertainment.

With daily news, reviews, features, and more, STARLOG.com is your home for sci-fi on the web.

In addition, our new Digital store (launching next month), available on our network of online sites including STARLOG and FANGORIA, will soon feature beautifully restored digital editions of the entire run of STARLOG magazine.

We feel that these new technological ventures are very much in step with the futuristic concept of STARLOG, and will carry the brand forward into the new ideology of the 21st century and beyond.

It is also at this time that we announce the temporary cessation of the current run of STARLOG as a print magazine. After 33 years, and considering the present state of the economy, we feel its time for a major revamp and will be temporarily discontinuing publication while the model and redesign of the magazine are contemplated and executed.

The last print issue available for the time being is #374, while issue #375 will be available exclusively as a digital edition on the network in the very near future.

We're looking forward to bringing you more of the best of sci-fi in the months ahead. Thank you for your continued support and your understanding in this matter.

Still, for NavPress, the move to cease the printing operations for their magazines and enhance their web presence was decidedly the best one, though a difficult one.

"This new structure positions us for a long and fruitful ministry through publishing," said Miller in his announcement. "But it means saying goodbye to some outstanding people. That's always the hardest part."

According to NavPress, Navigators staff members were informed of the new developments on Friday, and the publishing division is now communicating details with its authors.

But The P-I, as it is called, will resemble a local Huffington Post more than a traditional newspaper, with a news staff of about 20 people rather than the 165 it had, and a site with mostly commentary, advice and links to other news sites, along with some original reporting.

Other newspapers have closed and many more are threatened. But the transition to an all-digital product for The P-I will be especially closely watched in an industry that is fast losing revenue and is casting around for a new economic model.

For one thing, the closing may end up putting greater pressure on the surviving and financially struggling Seattle Times, because of the end of a joint operating agreement between the two papers. It may even bring closer the day when Seattle has no local paper at all.

And the way The P-I is changing might hint at a path for future newspaper closings. To some extent, in shifting its business model, it will enter a new realm of competition. It will compete not just with the print-and-ink Times, but also with an established local news Web site, Crosscut.com, a much smaller nonprofit organization that focuses on the Northwest. The move shows how some newspapers, in the future, may not vanish but move the battle from print to the digital arena.

A spokesman for the newspaper said the cuts were made through a combination of layoffs, buyouts and elimination of job openings. The Journal has about 760 newsroom employees.

The Wall Street Journal is published by Dow Jones & Co., which also publishes this newswire. Dow Jones is owned by News Corp. (NWS), which will report its fiscal second-quarter earnings after the closing bell.

Domino, which offers advice on decorating, do-it-yourself projects, gardening, and party planning, will publish its final issue in March.

Take a magazine built around peddling products, couple that with a deepening recession in which people are less likely to purchase things, and you've got a recipe for failure. "This decision to cease publication of the magazine and its website is driven entirely by the economy," Townsend said. "Although readership and advertising response was encouraging in the early years, we have concluded that this economic market will not support our business expectations."

"The recessionary economy has impacted both publishing and broadcasting advertising, which accounts for approximately 60 percent of our revenue stream," Chief Executive Stephen Lacy said in a statement released on Thursday. "Trends indicate a continuing soft economy into calendar 2009 as well."

Meredith will take a charge of $16 million, which comes out to $9 million after tax, or 20 cents a share, for its fiscal 2009 second quarter.

The charge includes job cuts, the closing of Country Home magazine and moving the ReadyMade brand and Parents.com to its headquarters in Des Moines, Iowa, Meredith said. The publisher also has an office in New York.

Meredith plans to report its second-quarter results on January 22. Analysts on average are expecting earnings of 48 cents a share before charges and other items on revenue of $366.1 million, according to Reuters Estimates.

We've spent the last few months trying to make the business behind JPG sustain itself, and we've reached the end of the line. We all deeply believe in everything JPG represents, but just weren't able to raise the money needed to keep JPG alive in these extraordinary economic times. We sought out buyers, spoke with numerous potential investors, and pitched several last-ditch creative efforts, all without success. As a result, jpgmag.com will shut down on Monday, January 5, 2009.

The one thing we've been the most proud of: your amazing talent. We feel honored and humbled to have been able to share jpgmag.com with such a dynamic, warm, and wonderful community of nearly 200,000 photographers. The images on the website and in the magazine were adored by many, leaving no doubt that this community created work of the highest caliber. The kindness, generosity, and support shared among members made it a community in the truest sense of the word, and one that we have loved being a part of for these past two years.

The 335 new magazines of ’08, which tended to be small titles with a narrow focus, was down from 386 in 2007 and 431 in 2006, according to MediaFinder.

And yet, despite an inhospitable environment and the growing power of the Internet, intrepid publishers see a future in print.

"You still get bigger ad dollars from print than from online," said Trish Hagood, president of Oxbridge Communications, owner of MediaFinder. "If publishers can find subjects that truly interest people, then they can find the advertising."

The Christian Science Monitor, which turns 100 years old this year, is announcing on Tuesday, Oct. 28, that it will cease daily publication next April. The newspaper will shift to a weekly print format while increasing its emphasis on its Web site, says its editor, John Yemma.

In doing so, the Monitor will become by far the most prominent newspaper to scale back its print edition substantially.

• The Daily Mail reports that Thomson-Reuters may be preparing a round of cuts.
• Bloomberg reports that Gannett is reevaluating its dividend after third-quarter profits plunged 32%.
• Forbes has a story about the struggling newspaper business.
• LA Observed has posted an email memo from editor Russ Stanton about layoffs at the Los Angeles Times.
• Folio says that CurtCo Media has put the luxury Robb Report magazine on the block again.
• 02138 magazine will be ceasing publication - details here, here and here.
• Radar magazine is shutting down again.

FT management has begun consultation with employees about the redundancies, with staff in the editorial library and the managing editor's office at risk of losing their jobs.

Other employees who face possible redundancy include staff from advertising sales, finance, IT, conferences and marketing.

No journalists will be made redundant, but FT insiders fear the loss of librarians will affect editorial quality.

Dan Bogler, the FT managing editor, told journalists that six library staff faced possible redundancy along with two staff from his office.

The Silicon Valley company announced the latest round of cuts against a backdrop of poor third-quarter results and a grim economic forecast. The company's profit tumbled 64%, to $54 million, or 4 cents per share, from $151 million, or 11 cents per share, in the same quarter a year ago.

Revenue inched up 1%, to $1.8 billion, from a year ago.

The profit fell short of the 9 cents per share forecast by analysts polled by Thomson Reuters.

Reflecting the downturn, Yahoo lowered its revenue estimates for the remainder of the year. It now expects 2008 revenue of $7.2 billion to $7.4 billion — down from a previous estimated range of $7.4 billion to $7.9 billion.

CosmoGirl, the Cosmo spinoff introduced in 1999, follows Time Inc.'s Teen People and Hachette's ElleGirl out of print. Ad pages in the first three quarters came in 14.4% lower than in the same period last year, according to Media Industry Newsletter. Circulation slipped 1.4% in the first half but sank 18% on newsstands, where advertisers often look for signs of a magazine's vitality, according to reports filed with the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

"This was a very difficult decision, and I want to extend my personal appreciation to Editor in Chief Susan Schulz, who joined CosmoGirl shortly after its launch, nearly a decade ago, and has been its editor for the past five years," said Cathie Black, president of Hearst Magazines, in an internal e-mail this morning. "She is a highly talented editor and will continue to work with us on a special-projects basis."

The Times told staff in an internal e-mail Tuesday that the paper's flagship Web site will soon become host to news from sister paper the International Herald Tribune and that the Tribune's site will be shuttered. The move will require "hard decisions about jobs at the IHT," and the company is now looking to "reassign or relocate people," according to the memo.

In an interview Tuesday, NYTimes.com General Manager Vivian Schiller insisted that "it's absolutely, positively not about cost savings." Rather, it's about growth, she said.

Schiller hopes tying the sites together will increase the Times' traffic--and, significantly for an Internet news business, give it more content against which to sell ads. Schiller also says the move will let the paper better capitalize on the roughly 18% to 20% of traffic coming from foreigners by selling more ads for them.

Tuesday's edition will be the paper's last, newspaper spokesman Michael Moi said Monday. He declined to elaborate.

Editor Seth Lipsky had been scrambling to attract new investors for the paper, one that laid claim to a grand tradition by taking the name of the original New York Sun, a Pulitzer Prize-winning giant that published for more than a century before disappearing in a merger in 1950.

On Sept. 4, Lipsky announced the paper had endured "substantial" losses and would close at the end of the month without an infusion of cash.

Lipsky had hoped to carve out a profitable niche among New Yorkers, and he succeeded, in part: The paper definitely carved itself a niche, but it wasn't profitable.

Nicole Caldwell, Playgirl's editor-in-chief, just emailed confirmation that the magazine is indeed shuttering its print operation.

"Playgirl is going all-Web. The last print issue will be the Jan/Feb 2009 magazine, which comes out Nov. 18," Caldwell writes.

Known by the initials FSB, the magazine is axing 14 of its 17 editorial staffers, including its editor Dan Goodgame, a 20-year veteran of Time Inc.

FSB was run essentially as a custom-published magazine for small business holders of American Express cards, but because it had controlled (in other words, free) circulation of around 1 million, it was considered a lucrative add-on to the main magazine for ad-sales purposes.

Ad revenue, the primary source of newspaper income, began sliding two years ago, and as hiring freezes turned to buyouts and then to layoffs, the decline has only accelerated.

On top of long-term changes in the industry, the weak economy is also hurting ad sales, especially in Florida and California, where the severe contraction of the housing markets has cut deeply into real estate ads. Executives at the Hearst Corporation say that one of their biggest papers, The San Francisco Chronicle, is losing $1 million a week.

Over all, ad revenue fell almost 8 percent last year. This year, it is running about 12 percent below that dismal performance, and company reports issued last week suggested a 14 percent to 15 percent decline in May.

"Never in my most bearish dreams six months ago did I think we'd be talking about negative 15 percent numbers against weak comps," said Peter S. Appert, an analyst at Goldman Sachs. "I think the probability is very high that there will be a number of examples of individual newspapers and newspaper companies that fall into a loss position. And I think it's inevitable that there will be closures in this industry, and maybe bankruptcies."

All the layoffs - about 4.4 percent of CNet's work force - will involve employees in the U.S., according to a document CNet filed Wednesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

CNet's suite of popular websites commands a huge worldwide audience, but its investors have long complained the company's profits haven't kept pace with the growth of Internet advertising.

The company indicated in the filing that the layoffs would be effective immediately and cost at least $3.8-million in severance pay, outplacement and other expenses.

The company, which owns the LexisNexis information service and the medical journal, The Lancet, is understood to be preparing to cut the jobs over the next couple of years as it centralises functions such as procurement, human resources and IT across the group. Analysts expect the job cuts - the majority of which will take place outside Britain - to contribute to a restructuring that will shed as much as £100m from Reed's annual costs bill. It is unclear whether the cuts will be acknowledged formally in its annual results announcement on Wednesday.

Reed, which is listed in London and Amsterdam, employs nearly 37,000 people around the world. The proposed job reductions are thought to be focused on functions that have previously operated separately across the disparate parts of Reed's empire, which includes units specialising in science and medical, legal, and business publishing, the last of which includes a large exhibitions division.

Sir Crispin Davis, Reed's chief executive, told analysts last July that the cost cuts would be "fairly spread" across the group and that the efficiency programme, dubbed "One Company", would continue for the next two to three years. He said at the time: "We've taken the low and mid-hanging fruit. It's why we put in [train] this programme and I think it's been very effective in identifying new areas. Over the last six months we've taken that a step further... with the objective of continuing to deliver meaningful cost reductions across the business."

The cuts will be achieved by "by not filling jobs that go vacant, by offering buyouts, and if necessary by layoffs," said the executive editor, Bill Keller. The more people who accept buyouts, he said, "the smaller the prospect of layoffs, but we should brace ourselves for the likelihood that there will be some layoffs."

The Times has 1,332 newsroom employees, the largest number in its history; no other American newspaper has more than about 900. There were scattered buyouts and job eliminations in The Times' newsroom in recent years, but the overall number continued to rise, largely because of the growth of its Internet operations.

Shares in The New York Times Company rose almost 5 percent Thursday after the newsroom staff reductions were reported, closing at $18.84, up 86 cents.

The Times Company has made significant cuts in the newsrooms of some of its other properties, including The Boston Globe, as well as in non-news operations. Company executives say the overall head count is 3.8 percent lower than it was a year ago.

Tribune Chief Executive Sam Zell broke the news in one of his frequent "Talk to Sam" e-mails to all employees. The job cuts are focused on the corporate staff and the company's nine newspapers. Besides The Times, they include the Chicago Tribune, Newsday in New York, the Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel, the Baltimore Sun and the Hartford (Conn.) Courant.

The decision was reached in meetings of senior executives Monday and Tuesday at Tribune's Chicago headquarters, said Hiller, who was among them.

For now, Tribune's broadcast division, consisting of nearly two dozen stations around the country, including KTLA-TV Channel 5 in Los Angeles, will be spared. Fox TV veteran Ed Wilson, hired last week to run the broadcast operation, will be given time to evaluate his business and make his own personnel decisions later, according to a Tribune executive familiar with the situation.

The job cuts will come swiftly. Hiller said all the people affected would be out of the company by the end of March. The Times has 3,544 employees, 887 of them in the newsroom.

There were 389 new magazines launched in 2007. There were also 636 magazines launched in 2007.

Exactly how many depends on who's doing the counting.

"We only count magazines that we have physical copies of," says University of Mississippi professor Samir "Mr. Magazine" Husni, who tracks launches monthly on his Web site. "That is, no announcement or wishful thinking that we are launching."

Through November, there were 636 magazine launches by Husni's count, including 221 published four times or more and 363 special issues that may or may not come out with a second.

BusinessWeek laid off a dozen editorial and business employees amid new integration of its digital and print editorial operations. The new structure will be phased in this month.

"For the past three years, we've been moving progressively toward integrating our print and digital operations -- by increasing reporters' contributions to BusinessWeek.com, combining our overseas bureaus and copy-desk teams and seating together everyone within a given coverage area," said Editor in Chief Stephen J. Adler in an internal memo that was posted on Talking Biz News. "Today we complete this vital transformation by creating a single editorial organization for BusinessWeek. The new structure will enable us to collaborate more effectively, take greater advantage of everyone's abilities, learn new skills and serve our readers and web users better."

House & Garden had to contend with more than a dozen large national and regional magazines that cover much of the same terrain, like House Beautiful, Better Homes & Gardens, Traditional Home, Country Home and Home.

"The category as a whole is so crowded," said Kelly Foster, senior partner and print director at MindShare North America, a media planning and buying agency that is part of the WPP Group, adding that the magazines "get in each other's way."

That was particularly true for House & Garden, she said, as Conde Nast took the magazine into the luxury end of the market — but then ran into Conde Nast's own upscale publication, Architectural Digest. Conde Nast has two other entrants in the home design and furnishing field, Domino and Vogue Living, both started last year.

The offer was limited to the first 60 eligible employees that accepted it. Workers had to be at least 50 years old and have worked at the company a minimum of 10 years. The offering included cash payments based on service and enhanced retirement benefits.

There will be less than 60 positions cut as a result of the offering as some jobs will need to be refilled, Kevin Mowbray, publisher of the Post-Dispatch and a vice president of Lee, said in a statement.

Time Inc has decided to close rather than sell its monthly magazine Business 2.0, which has suffered a decline in advertising revenue, the New York Times reported in its online edition on Wednesday.

Employees have been told that on Wednesday human resources personnel and other executives from Time Inc will visit the magazine's San Francisco headquarters to formally shut down the operations, the report said. It will cease publication after its October issue, it said.

Time will reassign the editor of Business 2.0, Josh Quittner, and nine other editorial staff members to Fortune magazine, the report said.

The tabloid's publisher, American Media Inc., issued a brief statement that announced the Aug. 27 issue would be Weekly World News' last. It called the closure necessary "due to the challenges in the retail and wholesale magazine marketplace that have impacted the newsstand."

For all the headlines WWN has penned, it has also made headlines of its own. In 2001's deadly anthrax mailings, AMI's office in Boca Raton was targeted and a photo editor was killed. Since then, it has tended to lighter fare, including recent headlines "Mother Nature Endorses Gore for President" and "Why Moses Wandered in the Desert for 40 Years: He Lost the Map!"

AMI, which is based in Boca Raton and New York, did not immediately respond to questions seeking specifics on layoffs, circulation and business woes or plans for a final issue. The company only said WWN was the smallest of its publications, which include Star, National Enquirer and Men's Fitness.

Fairchild Publications, which has since been absorbed by Conde Nast, launched Jane with Pratt at the helm in 1997 with a 400,000 rate base. Pratt stepped down in July 2005, and Holley gave the women's title a more positive, girly attitude with a redesign that came out the following year. Holley was supposed to leave on a mission today to Uganda with actress Natalie Portman for the magazine's next cover,

Reached by cell phone today, Pratt said she was saddened by the news. "Some people think I would be gloating. When you put so much into building something, when you put that much into something, you really want it to be around."

The magazine struggled to find its place amid the established, mass women's fashion/beauty monthlies. Ad pages stood at 282 this year through July, per the Mediaweek Monitor, an increase of 20.8 percent, but were less than half of what they were two years ago. Total paid and verified circ stood at 713,581 in the second half of 2006, up 1.9 percent, per the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

I have been a freelance contributor to Tips & Tricks Magazine for the last 1.5 years, and I just found out today that August will be the last issue. From now on, there will only be monthly codebooks, which sounds incredibly intriguing (who wants to read people's opinions anyway?). The bigwigs at LFP were planning on firing the entire staff this week while they were away from the office at E3 promoting the magazine. But if they knew anything at all about the industry, they would have realized that E3 is still two weeks away.

The plan was to fire all employees in the middle of the week, but when I received a letter with my latest paycheck this past weekend (I was told that I shouldn’t have received it until later this week) that said "Tips & Tricks magazine is ceasing its publication of monthly issues...Thank you for your contribution to Tips & Tricks Magazine." I knew that something was up.

Approximately six weeks after it acquired complete ownership of Bookspan, Bertelsmann has initiated a major overhaul of the book club business, a process that will eliminate 280 positions, or about 15% of its workforce of 1,900. As part of integrating Bookspan into BMG Columbia House, an unspecified number of smaller clubs will be closed as will Madison Park Press, the publishing program launched about 18 months ago.

To cut costs and try to adapt to a changing media marketplace, The Chronicle will trim 25 percent of its newsroom staff by the end of the summer.

"This is one of the biggest one-time hits we've heard about anywhere in the country," said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, in Washington.

Eighty reporters, photographers, copy editors and others, as well as 20 employees in management positions are expected to be laid off by end of the summer. Chronicle Publisher Frank Vega said Friday that voluntary buyouts are likely to be offered.

Vega declined to say whether the paper is continuing to lose $1 million a week, as Hearst attorney Daniel Wall stated in court in November during a hearing on an antitrust suit filed by San Francisco businessman Clint Reilly.

"We're not getting into any specifics at this point," Vega said. "It's fairly common knowledge that we have had a tough financial row here for several years. As we continue to evaluate our situation, unfortunately continued belt-tightening is necessary."

Wizards, as the licensor of Dragon and Dungeon magazines, made the decision not to renew our license at the end of the current term. They generously gave us a ten-month notice that the magazines would be ending, even though they were only obligated to give us notice in a much shorter time frame. Once they let us know their decision, we both cooperated on a transition plan to take care of our customers. Wizards agreed to extend our original license so that we could complete the Savage Tide Adventure Path. They allowed us to time the announcement so that we could discuss it with distributors and retailers at the GAMA Trade Show in Las Vegas in April. They have also graciously agreed to allow us to continue to sell our Dragon and Dungeon products until they are gone, rather than forcing us to blow them out or destroy them at the end of the license. In short, they have really bent over backwards to allow Paizo to give our customers the best service possible in this time of transition, and for that, I am very thankful.

Many people have asked why Paizo doesn't just create new print magazines that would be just like Dragon and Dungeon, but without the official D&D content. Well, if there were a viable way for us to transition to a new magazine format, we might have. However, you can't just create a new magazine and have it automatically appear in all of the places that carried Dragon and Dungeon. Hobby store managers and gamers might understand the value of a new magazine, but what about bookstore managers, military suppliers, major magazine distributors, or advertisers? You've basically got to start over from scratch with them, and in many cases that means you have to buy your way in. When we started Paizo five years ago, Dragon and Dungeon magazines had a combined 40 years of inertia behind them, but in today's marketplace, starting a new magazine on that scale would take more than a million dollars. I'm sure that some enterprising company will come out with a magazine to try to fill that niche, but I sincerely doubt that they will be able to afford to put in the same high-quality content that Dragon and Dungeon had each month and sell it for the low price that we were able to offer thanks to the size and dedication of the Dragon and Dungeon audience.

Instead, we decided to take the type of content that you have been telling us that you have been enjoying so much in the magazines, and we migrated it to Pathfinder. Pathfinder isn't a magazine; it's a monthly 96-page, full-color book. It will feature the same artists and authors that you love so much from Dragon and Dungeon magazines, but there is no advertising (except for a few house ads in the back). The $19.99 MSRP might initially seem high compared to the two magazines, but you're really getting a similar amount of content. Dragon and Dungeon average around 55 pages of content per issue for $7.99. That's 110 pages of content for $15.98 each month. Pathfinder will give you 96 pages for $19.99, but you're buying a book that's printed on higher-quality paper and that will survive extensive use at the gaming table much better than a magazine. In short, we think that we will continue to be giving you one of the best values in gaming.

Another storied print magazine is coming to an end in print, and the focus is shifting to online and events: InfoWorld, the weekly magazine owned by IDG, is closing down, and the announcement will come Monday morning, paidContent.org has confirmed. It was first reported in MediaSurvey premium newsletter here. InfoWorld has been a pioneer online and has been the earliest to embrace new techniques and forms of journalism and advertising, including blogging, podcasts, RSS (and ads in it), screencasting and others, so this move probably makes sense.

The worst thing: the staff internally didn't know about this until this story came out, and got picked up by SF Chronicle and Valleywag among others. From what my sources told me, there won't be too many layoffs as most of the team had been working on multiplatform already: print, online and events. And don't discount the events side, as that was a major source of revenue for the brand.

The company, which also publishes Car and Driver, Elle and other magazines, said in a statement late Monday that the April edition of Premiere, which is on newsstands until April 16, will be the last for the U.S. edition. The international editions will continue.

Hachette said that Premiere's Web site would continue and will be revamped later in the year. The company had also shut the print edition of Elle Girl but kept its Web site going, a move that Time Warner Inc.'s Time Inc. unit did with Teen People last year.

Premiere was a monthly magazine but faced competition from weekly rivals such as Time Inc.'s Entertainment Weekly and others. Last year Premiere's paid ad pages declined 25 percent, according to the Publishers Information Bureau.

Cracked the company, I should point out, is still alive and well. We're currently all working exclusively on book projects and our website at Cracked.com right now, which pays for submissions so there will still be freelance opportunities for you in the future. But unfortunately, distribution issues and the publishing industry as a whole made publishing a bi-monthly comedy magazine unviable. Will we revisit it in the future? Ya never know. But for now, no more Cracked magazine.

As part of the change, the paper will trim its circulation territory to 73 counties, centered on metro Atlanta. The pullback will take effect April 1 and means the print version of the AJC will no longer be available in Alabama, South Carolina, Florida and many parts of Georgia.

The paper also will overhaul its Thursday community editions, cutting them from 13 to four. The zones that remain will be larger than previous publications, focusing on the most populous areas of metro Atlanta -- Fulton, Cobb, DeKalb and Gwinnett counties. The AJC's Home & Garden will be shuttered and replaced with a new section, HomeStyle, which will be carried in the community editions.

The changes come as the AJC, like other newspapers, grapples with big shifts in news consumption and advertising spending.

The changes were announced Thursday after months of planning. "We have to transform the organization," Publisher John Mellott said in an interview.

The future of MTV's signature music video show, Total Request Live, looks precarious, illustrating the Viacom network's struggles to stay relevant in an increasingly Web-based media landscape.

Speculation inside MTV and at the major music labels has been mounting that TRL, a daily afternoon show that has been experiencing declining ratings, will soon be canceled or scaled back to two days a week. The newest fuel for the rumor mill: the fact that much of the staff at TRL's studio at New York City's Times Square was laid off late Tuesday, including members of the wardrobe, makeup and technical staff.