media deathwatch

Genre Magazine Ceases Publication

Ad pages are down, staffers are forced to take unpaid leave, and more dailies are shedding their smudgy paper skins and going live. Plus, there’s one less gay publication to go around (in an opaque plastic sleeve). After the jump, today’s bad media news.

• Steamy gay monthly Genre has suspended publication do to a slump in ad sales during the recession. [Towleroad]

• Like the Seattle Post-Intelligencer before it, the Ann Arbor News will close in July to be replaced by web-only AnnArbor.com. Publisher Laurel Champion, who will be executive vice president, told News employees they can apply for positions with the new company. Gee whiz! How sweet of you, Laurel. [MLive.com]

• McClatchy’s Charlotte Observer will cut its workforce by 14.6 percent and reduce the pay of most remaining employees, the company announced this morning. [Charlotte Observer]

• Vacation never seemed so ominous. Gannett Co., the owner of USA Today and more than 80 other daily U.S. newspapers, is requiring its highest-paid workers to relinquish up to two weeks pay due to sinking advertising revenue. [Yahoo]

• Similarly, Advance Publications is instituting mandatory ten-day unpaid leave and a pension freeze at nearly all of its daily papers outside Michigan, including New Jersey’s Star-Ledger, Cleveland’s Plain Dealer, Portland’s Oregonian, New Orleans’s Times-Picayune, and The Staten Island Advance, as well as the chain’s dailies in Syracuse, N.Y.; Birmingham, Ala.; and Harrisburg, Pa. [Editor & Publisher]

• Even sex and fashion are floundering in this economy. All of the women’s and mens’ fashion magazines — from upscale Vogue to sexalicious Cosmo — lost 20 percent or more ad pages in April, according to the latest figures from Media Industry Newsletter. [WWD]

Genre Magazine Ceases Publication