InfoWorld to Shutter Print Edition

Posted on March 25, 2007

Paid Content is reporting that IDG's InfoWorld is shuttering its print edition to focus on its events and website.

Another storied print magazine is coming to an end in print, and the focus is shifting to online and events: InfoWorld, the weekly magazine owned by IDG, is closing down, and the announcement will come Monday morning, paidContent.org has confirmed. It was first reported in MediaSurvey premium newsletter here. InfoWorld has been a pioneer online and has been the earliest to embrace new techniques and forms of journalism and advertising, including blogging, podcasts, RSS (and ads in it), screencasting and others, so this move probably makes sense.
The worst thing: the staff internally didn't know about this until this story came out, and got picked up by SF Chronicle and Valleywag among others. From what my sources told me, there won't be too many layoffs as most of the team had been working on multiplatform already: print, online and events. And don't discount the events side, as that was a major source of revenue for the brand.

Print titles closing while the websites survive is a growing trend. A few other recent titles include Cracked, which will cease publishing the recently relaunched print magazine but keep the website; FHM USA, a men's title that is also terminating the print title but keeping the website; and Premiere, which is shuttering its print title but expanding its online website.

The trend will probably mean growing competition for independent online websites and blogs as media companies with print magazines dump them to focus more on the Internet.