Sad news today, as the slow demise of the traditional news business has now resulted in the closing of the institution that most comprehensively presided over the industry for 125 years. Editor and Publisher magazine, after chronicling the rise and fall of the newspaper business, is now itself fallen. After so many little deaths, a meta-death.
In a message appropriately enough posted on Romenesko, the must-read online successor to E&P, Nielsen Business Media President Greg Farrar announced that the magazine, unwanted after a massive acquisition deal, will close:
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 - those parts of our portfolio that have the greatest potential for growth - 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.
As a result of these decisions, many of our friends and colleagues within these businesses will be leaving the company or will begin to transition to the new ownership immediately. These venerable brands have long been an important part of our Business Media family, and we are pleased that e5 will continue to capitalize on the brands' potential. The transition is expected to be complete by the end of the year.
One of those "friends and colleagues" that will be cut adrift is someone Huffington Post readers know pretty well -- Greg Mitchell, who has served as E&P's editor since 2002, and who readers know to be a comprehensive and prolific commentator on the news industry.
E&P has been around in one form or another since 1884, and can rightly lay claim to being the chief chronicler of the American newspaper industry. As recently as 2001 a survey of newspaper editors and copy editors conducted by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication found E&P to be the most widely read industry journal in the newspaper industry.
E&P is a perennial honoree of American Business Media's Neal Awards, winning 11 of them during Mitchell's tenure -- including a 2007 win for its coverage-of-the-coverage of the Iraq War. Nielsen will also shutter Kirkus Reviews, which has been reviewing books since 1933.
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