hard news

Staff of Life magazine @1988

The staff of the only Life there is left—pictures on the web—now numbers two that I know of. And last week the news was that the once-great magazine company of Time Inc. is likely to be sold to the publishers of Good Housekeeping, bless their hearts.
      All the "girl" magazines, that is, or profitable ones—In Style, Real Simple & etc and the cash cow, People. The boy magazines, Time, Sports Illustrated and Fortune are apparently so elderly and unmarriageable that no one will have them. They will be kept to dwindle away or die the Life digital death. And they are selling the Time-Life building.
       It feels personal. All the talented, bright people who were nurtured by that company, like a small town before the Warner and then AOL "mergers"—just gone. I myself spent some 17 years at Life and worked at People three separate times, including as copy clerk on the very first issue, and just before, thank fortune (no, not Fortune), taking the last great buyout in 2001. Now it feels like my toil was valueless. Magazine history has been downsized.

in lieu of flowers

Supposedly, there was "stunned silence" from the staff of Newsweek when they were told that the newsmagazine was for sale.
No doubt. I heard that same stunned silence when TV-Cable Week, a magazine Time Inc. was still building office space for, was jettisoned. I heard it when LIFE was folded for the zillionth time—but during the first time in years when it was in the black. I daresay the folks at Time magazine will be hearing it before too long as well. We have search engines to search for our news; what is Time, says one of my friends who used to work there, but a search engine?
Once again, a boatload of journalists will be out of work. They can't all run bed and breakfasts or become professors. Donate to their favorite charity: send work.

another career bites the dust

The newest and the oldest employees of Life magazine were fired last night. When I, the oldest, confronted the editor he said he had no idea we had been fired, that the office manager must have decided. Yes, friends, this was a dream—Life itself got fired nine years ago now—but it bears a strong relation to waking life.
Journosaurus, as my friend Ed has dubbed us, along with subspecies reportosaurus and photosaurus, is now Journosaurus, wrecks, tottering around on its last lizard legs.
Two friends who recently had to travel to Washington D.C. and Albany (respectively) from New York, made it in day trips, because their news organizations (one radio, one TV) would no longer pay for a hotel. The last magazine I did a free-lance piece for just went down the tubes (yes, I got paid). Everyone I know who works in print goes to work wondering if they'll still have a job at the end of the day, and that goes for the most venerable of publications (Tribuneodon comes to mind). The New York Times company announced that their revenues went down by nearly half in the most recent quarter and that they're putting up their new hq for sale. I am freely prophesying that we will see the death of many of these dinosaurs this year.
The reasons are twofold:
No ads.
No readers.
Think of all the mischief all these unemployed journalists can get up to. Seriously, though, You should write a book!