I have just found out via Greg Mitchell's tweets that Editor and Publisher is folding. This is not good. Editor & Publisher was indispensible (along with McClatchy reporters) during the Bush/Cheney era.
Mitchell says the New York Times will have a piece up soon, and Politico's Michael Calderone has the memo.
Greg's tweets after the fold:
"Yes, it's true, my magazine, E&P, axed today, out of job. At office until end of year--and here, of course."
24 minutes ago from web
"E&P was one of oldest magazines in USA -- since 1884. Long battler for First Amendment, reporter rights, watchdog of industry."
17 minutes ago from web
"We'll have story on site soon but, frankly, everyone shocked and trying to cope. Not even going online? Maybe someone will step forward?"
16 minutes ago from web
"Thanks for all the kinds words on E&P closing. Great staff, some here 20-25 years. NYT doing piece."
13 minutes ago from web
Calderone says that Nielsen Business Media is selling eight of it's maganzines, including Billboard and AdWeek, but that E&P will be shut down. Neilsen President Greg Farrar wrote this morning that the move "will allow us to strengthen investment in our core businesses – those parts of our portfolio that have the greatest potential for growth – and ensure our long-term success. We remain committed to building our trade show group and affiliated brands." Nice. What about the public good?
In 2006, VNU (Neilsen) was acquired by a group of six private equity firms, one of which was The Carlyle Group. Carlyle is infamous, of course, as being featured in Michael Moore's 'Fahrenheit 911.' In the movie, Moore argues that the group had questionable involvements and motivations regarding the Bush family and 9/11. The Bin Laden family was connected to the group, James Baker III served as an advisor, and Moore points out that the group was the 11th largest defense contractor in the U.S. at the time. George H. W. Bush served as senior advisor to the Asia Advisory Board from 1998 through October 2003, and that Dubya was on the Board of Directors of Carlyle's Caterair, until he quit in 1992.
Will update.
In 2004, Greg Mitchell was interviewed by the Echo Chamber Project. They asked him what influence E&P had had in the lead-up to the Iraq War. Here was his response:
Yeah. Well, we noticed in the months leading up to what became the invasion of Iraq that most newspapers were kind of going along quietly with the Bush administration claims. And we were quite alarmed with that and we speak to the entire newspaper industry. So we thought we had a real role in continually calling attention to the questions that the press was not asking. In fact, we ran a cover story in January of 2003 -- more than two months before the invasion -- and the cover story was called "Unanswered Questions" and it had a picture of Bush. So we recognized early on that a lot of the assumptions and declarations of evidence from the administration were very weak and that the press was not pressing them hard enough. And unfortunately we had to keep that up during the war -- after the war. And unfortunately we’ve been proven correct on virtually everything that we were warning about because the weapons of mass destruction were not found, the links between Iraq and al Qaeda were not discovered, the fact that the war was gonna be incredibly more costly, there were going to be more casualties, it was gonna go on longer than anyone imagined -- All these things that we were raising at the beginning of 2003 have all come to pass. So despite our warnings -- I mean, in some ways, it made us feel good because we got a lot of attention -- a lot of credit for doing that. We won a major award for our news coverage throughout the year. But on the other hand, it made us also feel a little helpless because we weren’t able to swing the newspaper industry as a whole behind some of the alarms we were raising.
UPDATE #1: AP - Editor & Publisher Closing After 108 Years
"Editor & Publisher" is #2 Trending Topic on Twitter at 12:48 p.m. ET
UPDATE #2: Article up at their site now.
'Editor & Publisher' to Cease Publication After 125 Years
By Shawn Moynihan
Published: December 10, 2009 12:13 PM ET
NEW YORK Editor & Publisher, the bible of the newspaper industry and a journalism institution that traces its origins back to 1884, is ceasing publication.
An announcement, made by parent company The Nielsen Co., was made Thursday morning as staffers were informed that E&P, in both print and online, was shutting down.
The outpouring of surprise and strong support for E&P that has followed across the Web -- Editor & Publisher has even hit #4 as a Twitter trending topic -- raises the notion that the publication might yet continue in some form.
- snip -
As news spread of E&P's fate, the staff has been inundated with calls from members of the industry it covers, mostly expressing shock or disbelief. They will stay on for the remainder of 2009.
Greg Mitchell, editor since 2002, has hailed the staff and their accomplishments. Some staff writers/editors have been at E&P for a quarter of a century. "I'm shocked that a way was not found for the magazine to continue it some form -- and remain hopeful that this may still occur," he said.
UPDATE #3: Columbia Journalism Review interviews Greg about E&P shutdown: http://www.cjr.org/...