Ziff Davis Media announced Wednesday that it was ending print publication of its 27-year-old flagship, PC Magazine, and would take the title online only.
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PC Magazine?s circulation was 1.2 million in the late 1990s.
It is the latest of several magazine publishers to drop a print edition, as advertising plummets and the cost of printing a paper version rises.
?The viability for us to continue to publish in print just isn?t there anymore,? Jason Young, chief executive of Ziff Davis, said in an interview.
While most magazines make their money mainly from print advertising, PC Magazine derives most of its profit from its Web site. More than 80 percent of the profit and about 70 percent of the revenue come from the digital business, Mr. Young said, and all of the writers and editors have been counted as part of the digital budget for two years.
The change will not require much of an adjustment, because the focus has been on getting articles to the Web first, said Lance Ulanoff, the editor of the PCMag Digital Network, which is what PCMag.com and its accompanying Web sites were renamed on Wednesday. ?All content goes online first, and print has been cherry-picking for some time what it wants for the print edition,? Mr. Ulanoff said.
Circulation at PC Magazine has been declining since the late 1990s, when it hit a peak of 1.2 million. This year, the magazine?s rate base was 600,000.
Mr. Young said that while the print magazine would be profitable in 2008, he forecast that it would lose money in 2009 because of fewer advertisements and rising costs. The final print edition will be the January 2009 issue.
?Obviously, the macroeconomic condition is putting pretty significant pressure on all forms of advertising,? Mr. Young said.
Seven production, circulation and advertising employees will be cut as a result of the move, out of a total of about 140 who work on PC Magazine and PCMag.com. Mr. Young said the company was considering taking its other print magazine, the video-game publication Electronic Gaming Monthly, into an online-only format, but would not make a decision before the end of the year.
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