Time Inc. shuts down Fortune Small Business magazine
Filed under: Company News, Economy, Media, American Express, Time Warner
On Wednesday morning, during Time Warner (TWX)'s third-quarter earnings conference call, chairman Jeff Bewkes said, "We'll continue to take a look at non-strategic and less profitable titles."Apparently, one of those non-strategic titles is Fortune Small Business. A Time Inc. spokesman confirms to DailyFinance that the Fortune spin-off is suspending publication.
The news comes just as the publisher embarks on a fresh round of job cuts aimed at saving $100 million in costs. Between 400 and 500 jobs will be eliminated, according to The New York Times, only a year after the company shed 600 workers.
But the closure of FSB will only eliminate one job, thanks to its publishing model. Update: Actually, the number is higher; see clarification below. Though it falls under the Fortune brand, FSB is owned by American Express Co. (AXP)'s American Express Publishing and produced by Time Inc. Content Solutions, its custom-publishing division. Most of the writers and editors who work on FSB also work on other titles, and so will get to keep their jobs.
Launched in 1991 as Your Company and rechristened in 1999 with its present title, FSB was published 10 times a year and distributed free to 1 million American Express cardholders. Ad pages in FSB were down 14.1 percent year-to-date through September, according to the Publishers Information Bureau.
Clarification: As the Times notes, the closure of FSB will actually result in the elimination of 11 jobs total, five of them full-time. Only one of those employees is technically within the Time Inc. News Business Unit; the rest are part of the Content Solutions division.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
11-04-2009 @ 8:35PM
Paul Solomon said...
Who needs magazines when we have the Internet?
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11-06-2009 @ 5:12PM
tom said...
Some of us still like reading from paper instead of staring at screens half our waking hours.
11-04-2009 @ 9:16PM
Anne said...
This was a magazine I read and got helpful information from. As a small business owner I look for ideas and advice from resources I trust. Fortune Samall Business was one of them. I am sorry to see it go.
Reply
11-05-2009 @ 1:27AM
Rob said...
I didn't even know the magazine existed, or I would have subscribed to it. They failed because they suck at marketing!
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11-05-2009 @ 5:15AM
Al Schrader said...
I like Amex
Reply
11-05-2009 @ 4:49PM
sue said...
That was my favorite magazine.... Bummer.
Reply
11-05-2009 @ 5:27PM
anonymous said...
Fortune Small Business was an independently edited magazine. The content was edited and written by journalists who were not beholden to Amex. The magazine was produced/proofread at Time Inc. Content Solutions as a cost-cutting measure: The in-house equivalent of outsourcing. It was NOT considered a custom publication.
This may seem like fine print, but it's essential. Pretty upsetting to see Time Inc. spin the story to belittle FSB after they've thrown it under a bus. ("Well, it wasn't reaaaally a magazine....and there weren't reaaaallly 11 people working full-time or the hourly equivalent.)
All the FSB content ran online at CNNMoney.com. In other words: it was journalism.
As for this line:
"Most of the writers and editors who work on FSB also work on other titles, and so will get to keep their jobs."
Entirely untrue. No one kept his/her job. The core masthead is gone.
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