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."

AFAR was conceived by Greg Sullivan, a serial international entrepreneur, over a beer on a beach in Goa, India, with business partner Joe Diaz, a former teacher. AFAR is the result of their shared thirst for a different kind of travel resource. "There were no media sources on the market for international travelers who shared our desire for deeper and more authentic experiences," said Sullivan. "AFAR takes travelers beyond the ordinary tourist haunts to experience the authentic essence of a place."

AFAR is helmed by some of the most talented names in the industry, including, as president and publisher, John Sheehy, who was the founding general manager of Time Inc.'s Health magazine, as well as president and publisher of Utne Reader, and COO of Weider Publications. Susan West, former executive editor of Smithsonian and co-founder of Health magazine, will be editor in chief, and Jane Palecek, the founding art director of Health and former design director of Mother Jones, will be art director. Laura Simkins, the founding consumer marketing director of Dwell, will be audience marketing director.

"AFAR's readers are redefining travel as a way to learn, connect and grow," said West. "So we'll tell stories from the inside out, celebrate authenticity and offer the unexpected. Our writers will approach their subjects with the same enthusiastic curiosity that drives our readers."

• New 'USA Today' Publisher Sees Future Paid Web Content
• Disney Looks Beyond Traditional Studio Model
• The Guardian Looks Into Online Charging Model
• Murdoch on Paid Content: "The Current Days of the Internet Will Soon be Over"
• Media Executives Plan Online Service to Charge for Content

Owner Crain Communications made the announcement on Tuesday, ending months of speculation over the fate of the pub. TV Week will continue as an online-only site, but with a dramatically reduced staff.

TV Week's NewsPro supplement, however, will continue as a stand-alone print publication, distributing issues monthly beginning in August.

Among those departing are editor Greg Baumann, who told Variety that he will assist in the transition through June 1, when TV Week publishes its final print edition. After that, Baumann said he planned to consult and freelance in journalism.

• 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.

“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.

Time is in good company - most big magazines' subscriptions cost on average little more than a dollar an issue. But now, as they consider the decline in advertising and the success of magazines that have increased prices recently, some publishers are wondering whether they can raise their prices without losing subscribers.

“We’re realizing that the product is undervalued,” said Michael A. Clinton, the chief marketing officer of Hearst Magazines, which raised cover prices on more than half of its magazines last year and plans to raise subscription prices this year.

Publishers have long set low subscription prices and have even lost money doing so, assuming that the real money came from ads. Subscription revenue was gravy.

In the last six months of 2008, subscribers paid an average of 47 cents an issue for Newsweek, 77 cents an issue for BusinessWeek and 89 cents an issue for Fortune, according to an analysis of their filings with the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

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.

ForbesWoman on Forbes.com will serve as the premier destination for professional women, with breaking news, prominent voices, regular features, in-depth reports and columns, peer-driven social networking and numerous opportunities for dialogue and interactivity. ForbesWoman content areas include: Leadership, Power Women, Entrepreneurs, Net Worth, Style, Wellbeing and Time. It will also offer a video series, "Smart Women Now," and featured columnists who include Moira Forbes and economist Sylvia Ann Hewlett.

ForbesWoman online launches with a special report entitled "The New Executive Woman," sponsored by Audi, which profiles the modern day female executive. This report includes: "Rule Breakers," a story about how more women are taking greater control of their careers; "Making Money in a Downturn," profiling how women have stayed on top of their game in these challenging economic times; "The Year's Savviest Celebrity Businesswomen," a look at the most successful celebrity businesswomen; "Managing a Family," about how women manage high-powered careers with children; "How She Leads," a study that investigates if women have what it takes to be leaders; and "How She Gets Ahead," which provides networking and management strategies.

Could Saturday soon cease to be a Newsday on Long Island? Media appraiser Kevin Kamen thinks it will, predicting that Cablevision will cease publishing a Saturday edition of the paper to save money. "By cutting out a Saturday edition Cablevision could quickly realize a savings across the board, be able to further eliminate editorial and production positions and essentially streamline costs that help their profit margins," he writes.

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.

Disney said its U.S. consumer magazine unit would focus its efforts on its bigger parenting title, 2.1-million-circ FamilyFun. March's issue of Wondertime will be the last, and Wondertime.com will be folded into Disney Online's network of family-focused Web sites in May, the company said.

Launched as a quarterly in early 2006, Wondertime offered an alternative to traditional parenting magazines, with a focus on learning and target audience of moms with kids under the age of 6. Wondertime was growing but from a small base. The title's ad pages increased 24 percent to 557 in 2008 versus a 3 percent decline in ad pages for the category overall, per the Mediaweek Monitor. Its rate base was slated to go 650,000 in February, an increase of 30 percent.

"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 Post and the Sun have agreed to share the newspapers' day-to-day coverage of certain Maryland news and sports," the papers said in a joint announcement. "In addition, the Post and the Sun may draw on each other's national, international and feature stories that are distributed by the LAT-WP News Service, to which both contribute. The exchanges will allow each paper to take advantage of the other's strengths and expertise in specific subjects around the region and the world."

Some content won't be shared, the papers said.

"As part of this accord, exclusive stories will not usually be shared, nor will coverage of such competitive subjects as Maryland state government and University of Maryland athletics," they said.

In prepared statements, the rival editors had nothing but praise for each other's paper. The sharing starts Jan. 1.

The Washington Post, citing unnamed staffers briefed on the decision, said the magazine's print edition will focus on popular consumer guides such as its annual ranking of colleges, while its Web site will offer expanded features.

U.S. News spokeswoman Liz Putze declined comment to The Associated Press. The magazine is owned by publisher and real estate developer Mortimer B. Zuckerman.

The magazine, which had average circulation of 1.8 million during the first half of the year, announced in June that it planned to change from weekly to biweekly publication.

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 Metropolitan Dog Club announced they are launching a new magazine called the The Blue Book Magazine. The magazine will be catering to discerning dog enthusiasts and their pampered pets.
• Cafe Media, LLC has announced the launch of Cafe magazine, a Latino Lifestyle magazine in English.
• Stardoll, a web magazine targeting tween girls, has cut a content deal with Elle US and its editor Malina Joseph.
• Sobefit is a new healthy lifestyle magazine focusing on South Florida. DM News reports that Sobefit will launch in December with a circulation of 40,000.
• The Food Network has launched Food Network Magazine. It will be bimonthly in 2009. Recipe Exchange has more details.
• Spectra is an interesting visual news reader from MSNBC.
• The Telegraph reports that the naked chef Jamie Oliver is getting his own magazine.

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.

Tribune, which owns nine daily papers including the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune, joins a growing list of newspapers that have sought to end AP contracts, or given notice of that, following plans to introduce a new controversial rate structure in 2009. The notice was given earlier this week.

AP Spokesman Paul Colford confirmed the cancellation notice, but said he had no more specifics. He issued the following statement about it:

"We understand that in this climate a lot of newspapers are re-examining their strategies. The Associated Press will continue to work with all members of the cooperative to ensure that we are providing the most efficient, valued and essential news service for them."

American Media last year stopped publishing Weekly World News after the tabloid's circulation dropped below 100,000 copies a week.

"The Weekly World News is a powerful brand in publishing, entertainment and online," said Weekly World News' new chief executive, Neil McGinness, in a statement released late Saturday. "The Weekly World News brand and its characters have inspired musicals, books, feature film projects and television shows over the years. We see tremendous potential for growing the brand and significantly expanding the business."

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, and neither American Media nor McGinness could be reached for comment.

The buyers are named after the half-man, half-bat creature that first appeared on the cover of Weekly World News in 1992. Bat Boy became a popular staple of the tabloid, emerging from time to time to lead police on a high-speed chase, ride the top of a New York subway train, shed his wings and endorse Al Gore for president.

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.

Working Mother is best known for its self-titled magazine, as well as for publishing a list of the 100 best companies for working mothers. Its membership organizations also include Diversity Best Practices and NAFE, the National Association for Female Executives.

But the publisher has faced sharp criticism in recent years, in part by sentiment that a publication that mindfully separates mothers from the rest of the working population is no longer relevant. Sister publication Working Woman shut down in 2001. Over the years Working Mother has dropped from a circulation peak near 1 million and cut its frequency to eight times a year from 10. The title has also changed hands numerous times, from its launch with McCall Publishing Co. in 1979, through Lang Communications, MacDonald Communications and MCG and Ms. Evans.

"Bringing Working Mother into Bonnier's existing portfolio of magazines is a natural fit," says Terry Snow, CEO of Bonnier Corp. "We already have two of the nation's leading brands for moms in Parenting and Babytalk magazines, so the acquisition of Working Mother Media allows us to strengthen our foothold in the mom market and offer advertisers the most comprehensive variety of media platforms reaching mom consumers."

And the timing is right, Snow continues: "You don't have to go very far to find current examples for working women who are also raising families. From corporate executives to teachers to entrepreneurs, these readers are not only successful at home raising a family, but at the same time are balancing challenging and rewarding professional careers."

Unlike websites that just aggregate news stories plucked from the Internet, Yahoo is cutting content deals with wire services and other "traditional" outlets as well as investing in a bullpen of its own reporters.

"Yahoo News is a news organization," director of editorial programming Jessica Barron told AFP in an interview this week.

"We have been doing a lot of original reporting and we are going to be doing a lot more."

NBC's decision to delay broadcasting the opening ceremonies by 12 hours sent people across the country to their computers to poke holes in NBC's technological wall - by finding newsfeeds on foreign broadcasters' Web sites and by watching clips of the ceremonies on YouTube and other sites.

In response, NBC sent frantic requests to Web sites, asking them to take down the illicit clips and restrict authorized video to host countries. As the four-hour ceremony progressed, a game of digital whack-a-mole took place. Network executives tried to regulate leaks on the Web and shut down unauthorized video, while viewers deftly traded new links on blogs and on the Twitter site, redirecting one another to coverage from, say, Germany, or a site with a grainy Spanish-language video stream.

As the first Summer Games of the broadband age commenced in China, old network habits have never seemed so archaic — or so irrelevant.

"The Olympics to me is a benchmark for how fast we've gone with technology," Brad Adgate, the senior vice president for research at Horizon Media, a media buying firm in New York, said. "Thirty months ago, no one was talking about YouTube. Now, it's a verb."

Tina Brown has worked in the US for more than two decades, since taking the helm of Vanity Fair in 1984; and she's now attempting to reinvent herself for the internet. But Lady Evans, as the 55-year-old former magazine editor is also entitled to call herself, remains at heart a Brit of an earlier generation, pickled in ink and arch wit. Her forthcoming news site, backed by old patron Barry Diller of IAC, is to be dubbed The Daily Beast, after the shameless tabloid of Evelyn Waugh's 1938 novel Scoop. The Digg kiddies will be so confused.

Under the agreement, Yahoo Movies will feature THR content on its site, and THR will promote Yahoo Movies trailer content and data in its digital and print editions, and on THR.com.

The brands also will present Yahoo's new "Purple Filmstrip Award" program, a monthly honor given to a film studio with the most successful movie title on Yahoo Movies as measured by a combination of the most trailer streams and best user reviews.

Yahoo, in association with THR, presented the first Purple Filmstrip Award to Warner Bros. on Wednesday for "The Dark Knight."

"We are thrilled to be working with Yahoo Movies to further move the THR brand into the digital space and extend our content to new readers," THR publisher Eric Mika said.

"With Yahoo's consumer reach and our leadership position in covering the business of entertainment on a global scale, this deal solidifies our symbiotic relationship and allows us to take advantage of an evolving model where media outlets can broaden and deepen their engagement with audiences," he added.

As previously reported, Comcast (CMCSA) was indeed interested in buying DailyCandy. But they ended up paying much more than the $75 million we head about earlier this month -- the cable company is paying Bob Pittman's Pilot Group Ventures $125 million for newsletter business, a source close to the sale tells us.

We hear that Viacom was also interested in the property, which has been off and on the blocks for the last few years, and had been considering paying $120 million. We also hear the company dropped out of the bidding process, run by Web 2.0 bankers Montgomery & Co., in June. In a congratulatory letter to the DailyCandy staff, Pittman says that the company is on track to hit $25 million in revenue this year and EBITDA of "well over" $10 million:

Robert Novak has announced his immediate retirement following the diagnosis of a brain tumor, a prognosis the Sun-Times' political columnist describes as "dire."

"The details are being worked out with the doctors this week, but the tentative plan is for radiation and chemotherapy," Novak said.

The Evans-Novak column was first distributed by Publishers Newspaper Syndicate on May 15, 1963, with the New York Herald-Tribune, the flagship newspaper. When the Herald-Tribune folded in 1966, the Chicago Sun-Times became their home newspaper.

JustJared.com has just learned that People magazine has drummed up the winning bid for the first pictures of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s twins - Knox Leon and Vivienne Marcheline. It is rumored that the winning bid is between $10 million and $15 million. The pictures will come up in a future People magazine issue (but not this week!). The money paid to Brad and Angelina has already been earmarked for charity.

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.

The Sun has claimed its Page 3 girl desktop widget has had over 10,000 downloads just four days after soft launching.

The widget, which sees Page 3 girl Keeley Hazell strut across users' desktops updating them on news from the site, was created by Glue London.

Keeley can also be made to perform magic tricks and put virtual kisses or bullet holes on the computer screen.

That's the figure Google (GOOG) vice president Marissa Mayer, who heads search products and user experience, threw out during a Tuesday lunch session at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference in Half Moon Bay, Calif. How does she put a value on a product that doesn't directly make money? The online giant figures that Google News funnels readers over to the main Google search engine, where they do searches that do produce ads. And that's a nice business. Think of Google News as a $100 million search referral machine.

Mayer's observation about Google News sheds some light on the company's broader strategy for driving traffic to its search engine – a strategy that has helped the company build a dominant market share lead over rivals Yahoo (YHOO) and Microsoft (MSFT). It's not all about the search engine itself. Google is happy to build popular products that don’t make any money on their own but tie users into a broader Google ecosystem. It's like Vegas casinos that offer cheap buffets to get people into the building, knowing a lot of them will end up playing slots.

NBC said the Weather Channel will continue to operate as a separate unit based in Atlanta.

NBC has made no plans to move the company or make any specific changes, a person close to the negotiations said Sunday. NBC considers the Weather Channel's new high-definition studio a critical part of the network, the person said.

Officials from NBC Universal are expected to visit with Weather Channel staff later this week, the person said.

The Weather Channel's Virginia-based owner, Landmark Communications, put the network on the block in January. Initial reports said the company wanted $5 billion, but analysts had said the original figure probably was planted by investors eager to get companies interested.

Frank Batten Sr., Landmark's former chairman and chief executive officer, is "grieving about the sale, but he supports it," said Richard Barry, vice chairman of Landmark.

Batten's son, Frank Batten Jr., the current chairman and CEO, said in a statement he is proud of how far the network has come but that he knows under NBC, "the Weather Channel and its employees will have increased opportunities for growth."