Tuesday 21st July: Q magazine closing: "The pandemic did for us"

July 21, 2020

Good morning! Today's Media Roundup is brought to you by Peter.

Q magazine's July 28th issue will be its last. Editor Ted Kessler tweeted yesterday, "The pandemic did for us and there was nothing more to it than that.”

In his final editor's letter he apologised for being unable to keep the much-loved music magazine afloat, writing, "We’ve been a lean operation for all of my tenure, employing a variety of ways to help keep our head above water in an extremely challenging print market. Covid-19 wiped all that out."

Owners Bauer Media put the title under review in May as sales and advertising revenues diminished during lockdown. But like many print magazines, the title's reader base was slipping before COVID-19: 2001 sales, mostly at newsagents were over 200,000 compared with less than 30,000 in 2019. The pandemic just accelerated the end.

As always, our thoughts, everyday it seems, are with the people losing their jobs.

In better news from the magazine world, Future is the latest publisher to announce that it will be paying back the money it received from the furlough scheme. The company, on track to meet its earnings targets for 2020, has benefited from increased digital revenues and cost savings through the TI acquisition.

* It also announced three news digital brands in gardening, TV and wellness.

The poster child for so many pioneering publisher plays, the New York Times has developed 45 first-party audience segments to allow clients to target ads directly. A team of six has been working on the project to keep the paper a full 12 months ahead of Google's 2021 Chrome cookie cut-off.

This year has been pretty crappy all round, but Folio: seeks solace in the fact that America's top magazine editors can still inspire around community, mission and public service. Fire yourself up with half-a-dozen inspirational quotes from the EICs at HBR, Cosmo, Inc., Pitchfork, The New Republic and Time.

This week's episode:

Julia talks about how Meredith's parenting brand are supporting parents who are trying to juggle childcare and their own jobs during the pandemic, how they use SEO to anticipate their audience’s needs, and their explanatory approach to polarising topics.

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