Biz mags in big trouble

The May 11 edition of Fortune has only 21 pages of paid advertising, which makes you wonder about how much longer it can hold onto its large editorial staff. Actually, Doug McIntyre at 24/7 Wall Street suspects that all three business magazines - Fortune, Forbes and Business Week - will be facing big cuts in editorial. McIntyre maintains that all three titles lost money in the first quarter, with BW in the most trouble.

Its advertising pages fell 16% in 2008, according to data from industry research letter MIN. The magazine's ad pages are down 38% this year through the end of April, and in the most recent issue, the drop was an extraordinary 63%. The magazine has more than 220 editorial, support, and management personnel based on the BusinessWeek masthead. This does not include ad sales, production, or circulation staffs. That is a large number of people to put out a magazine that often has fewer than 60 editorial pages and a website with less traffic than TheStreet.com based on March figures from online audience research firm comScore.

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Over the last several weeks, there has been speculation that one of the three large business magazines might fold. That is not going to happen, at least not in the foreseeable future. Instead these publications will have to cut staff, circulation, and abandon the ambitious editorial goals that have sustained their images for decades. Managing Editor Andy Serwer wrote in his editor's letter in the issue of Fortune with "How Bernie Did It," on the cover, "There's a place for loudmouth journalism, but it will never be a substitute for a deeply reported story, which I believe is a higher form of journalism."