Hearst Closes Teen

Thursday saw the closing of yet another title targeting teenage girls, with Hearst's announcement that it is shuttering Teen, a quarterly newsstand-only magazine that saw sales drop in 2008. Hearst had acquired Teen from Primedia, along with Seventeen, in 2003. Teen was dependent entirely on single-copy sales--which, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, declined 9.4% to about 210,000 in the first half of 2008. Its Web site lives on as part of Hearst's stable of teen-focused online properties.

Wondertime, which targeted young, affluent parents with more sophisticated fare than other parenting magazines, also shuttered Thursday. The magazine, officially launched by Disney in January 2006, enjoyed several years of sustained growth in ad pages-- increasing 60.1% in 2007 to 449, and 21% in 2008 to 544. But Wondertime could not weather the sharp economic downturn. In the past few years, other parenting and kids' titles suffered a similar fate: Meredith closed Child in March 2007, and MTV shuttered Nick Jr. Family Magazine around the same time. Disney Adventures closed in November 2007.

Teen's closing follows a number of similarly targeted titles, including Elle Girl and Teen People--closed in 2006 by Hachette and Time Inc., respectively--and CosmoGirl, closed by Hearst in December. Things are not looking too pretty for the holdouts: In 2008, ad pages fell 8.6% at Seventeen to 817, and 10% at Conde Nast's Teen Vogue, to 1,110. Other titles with teen and young women readers are also struggling. In 2008, ad pages at shopping mag Lucky fell 11% to 1,697, Entertainment Weekly fell 20.4% to 1,215, Life & Style Weekly tumbled 22.7% to 511, and In Style fell 14.7% to 2,749.

That's not to say that titles targeting teenage males are doing much better. 2007 saw the closing of FHM, followed by Stuff, its up-market competitor from Dennis Publishing. A year before, Conde Nast closed Cargo, a shopping title targeting young men. More recently, Alpha Media's Maxim has also contended with an ad slump, declining 10.9% in 2008 to 831 pages. Sister publication Blender, a music title, tumbled 30.6% to 522 pages.

Time Inc. to Sell Southern Living at Home

Time Inc. is looking for buyers for Southern Living at Home, a direct sales company launched in 2001 by Time Inc.'s Southern Progress Corp., which publishes flagship title Southern Living. Southern Living at Home uses social marketing on the model of Tupperware parties to sell interior decorating, crafts and kitchen wares. The news follows a number of job cuts at Southern Progress, whose stable of regional domestic lifestyle titles have seen ad pages tumble over the last couple of years. One title, Cottage Living, closed in November.

Garden & Gun Running Out of Fertilizer, Ammo

In an example of one media downturn amplifying another, Garden & Gun may close after a little over a year of publication, according to its owner, the Evening Post Publishing Co.--a newspaper publisher with high hopes for the Southern lifestyle magazine, but not enough cash. With its core business suffering from the steep declines in print ad revenue, Evening Post doesn't have the means to continue publishing the new magazine. Unless a new buyer is found, it will shutter Jan. 31.

Penton Reorganizes Business

Penton Media has reorganized its business-to-business publishing and events business into five broad groups containing a total of 13 segments, each focused on a distinct part of the B2B market. The reorganization, undertaken at the behest of Penton's new CEO Sharon Rowlands, created five new groups covering industry, technology, financial services, and food and marketing. The groups will be responsible for online properties, events, and services in these markets in addition to the B2B pubs.