Entertainment Weekly, InStyle Cease Print Publications

[TMC]

https://variety.com/2022/digital/new...le-1235175928/

By Jordan Moreau

Dotdash Meredith is ending the monthly print publications for Entertainment Weekly, InStyle, EatingWell, Health, Parents and People en Español, Dotdash Meredith CEO Neil Vogel said in a Wednesday memo to staff, obtained by Variety.

The publications will go digital-only effective today, and the transition is expected to terminate roughly 200 positions on the print side, Vogel said. The April editions of the print magazines will be the brands’ last, and the 200 eliminated jobs represent less than 5% of Dotdash Meredith’s total staff, according to Wall Street Journal, which broke the news.

“This is an important step in the evolution of Dotdash Meredith, and I want to be clear with everyone about what we are doing and what is ahead,” Vogel’s memo says. “We have said from the beginning, buying Meredith was about buying brands, not magazines or websites. It is not news to anyone that there has been a pronounced shift in readership and advertising from print to digital, and as a result, for a few important brands, print is no longer serving the brand’s core purpose. As such, we are going to move to a digital-only future for these brands, which will help us to unlock their full potential.”

Dotdash, the digital publishing division of Barry Diller’s holding company IAC, acquired Meredith for $2.7 billion last year. Vogel, then CEO of Dotdash, took the reigns of the combined Dotdash Meredith company. Dotdash, formerly known as About.com, was acquired by IAC from The New York Times in 2012 for $300 million in cash. The media company houses 14 brands across health, finance, lifestyle, food and beauty, including Verywell, Investopedia, The Balance, The Spruce, Simply Recipes, Serious Eats, Byrdie, Liquor.com, Treehugger and Brides. After acquiring Meredith, it also brought in People and Better Homes & Gardens.

Read Vogel’s full memo below:

Team,

Effective today, we will no longer be printing monthly magazines for EatingWell, Entertainment Weekly, Health, InStyle, Parents, and People en Español. This is an important step in the evolution of Dotdash Meredith, and I want to be clear with everyone about what we are doing and what is ahead.

We have said from the beginning, buying Meredith was about buying brands, not magazines or websites. It is not news to anyone that there has been a pronounced shift in readership and advertising from print to digital, and as a result, for a few important brands, print is no longer serving the brand’s core purpose. As such, we are going to move to a digital-only future for these brands, which will help us to unlock their full potential. These brands are among our most successful, important, and fastest growing digital properties – the online audience for Parents, InStyle, and EatingWell are each up over 40% year-over-year – and all of these brands have a bright future.

The decision to evolve these brands to digital-only means that some jobs – roughly 200 roles primarily supporting our print operations – will be eliminated. Transitions like this are very difficult, impacting colleagues and friends, some of whom have been with the company for decades. I can’t thank these employees enough for getting these brands to the strong place they are at today. Brand leaders have already notified those impacted, and we are taking great care to help ensure a smooth transition for these employees.

Today’s step is not a cost savings exercise and it is not about capturing synergies or any other acquisition jargon, it is about embracing the inevitable digital future for the affected brands. We are very serious about investing for growth – in 2022 alone we will be investing over $80 million in content across our brands. We currently have over 100 open positions in editorial, engineering, product, design, and ecommerce, some of which we hope to fill with people impacted today.

Naysayers will interpret this as another nail in print’s coffin. They couldn’t be more wrong – print remains core to Dotdash Meredith. From PEOPLE to BHG to Southern Living to WOOD, and all our other beloved print publications, we continue to provide incredible value to readers in print, and we will proudly print over 350 million magazines in 2022. Beginning today, we will be investing in our print-forward brands and products: everything from enhancing paper quality and trim sizes, to ensuring world-class editorial and beautiful photography. We are infusing fresh energy across these print-forward brands in all formats to make sure they can meet both the moment and the needs of their readers in new and innovative ways.

These are difficult decisions but we believe they are the correct decisions. We remain as enthusiastic as ever for the future of our brands and our company.

NV

Most of the earliest Entertainment Weekly readers remember it as the magazine that covered The Simpsons and The X-Files since they brought the magazine the most success (along with Star Wars stories as The '90s wore on). But it also stood out from other entertainment industry-focused weekly mags (like People and US Weekly) with its in-depth coverage of movies and TV, treating celebrities as real people/artists rather than gossip fodder, and nurtured under-appreciated hits, like Arrested Development and The Wire. But since a major administration change in 2008, the magazine got a bit wonky. With the decline of printed media, EW began to focus much more on their web content, and the mag's usual depth diminished as a result. Compare a 1990s issue to one from The New '10s, and the difference is noticeable. The TV coverage is mostly limited to longtime TV writer Ken Tucker, for instance. The coup de grace to many longtime readers, which coincided with the 2008 changeover, was an infatuation with Twilight, presumably to attract its fanbase into purchasing the magazine. While their borderline manic coverage toned down after 2010, the multiple covers and articles turned off non-fans before then — in the second half of '09, covers seemed to alternate between those and Michael Jackson retrospectives. Recently, it seems like the magazine's editor-in-chief (shared with People) is more obsessed about getting himself on television (an appearance by him on Younger with an accompanying editor's note in the magazine about how awesome he was could have been filled by literally anyone else) and about the People/Entertainment Weekly Network (an online attempt at bringing both magazines to television) than about the content of EW, and with how the election turned out, also took to political comments not really needed in an entertainment magazine. Sometime in June 2019, EW announced that it will become a monthly magazine instead of weekly.

[Hawkee]

I heard about this when I recieved my last print issue of Entertainment Weekly today and what I think Meredith Publishing is trying to do with the digital Entertainment Weekly is make an interactive version of the magazine as an app. Because when it was launched in 1990 Entertainment Weekly was THE source for learning about the latest movies and stories about celebrities and anything else in Hollywood and they would do tribute issues to celebrities that died in an awesome manner. Now that Entertainment Weekly is no longer doing print issues I wonder what copies will become huge collectors items? I know that the Chadwick Boseman tribute issue they did is collectible and the countless Marvel themed issues are huge collectible issues. Now that Entertainment Weekly no longer exists in print I wonder if Us Weekly will follow suit next?
Bestie

[80sTrivia]

Sad. I remember how excited I used to be to receive my copy of Entertainment Weekly in the mail, back when there were movies, TV shows, books and music worth getting excited over. I'd read each issue cover-to-cover. Loved the articles, interviews and reviews. Just one more thing that's disappeared from the world.

[Hawkee]

What I think Meredith Publishing is trying to do is create another entertainment magazine to replace Entertainment Weekly and they decided to make Entertainment Weekly a digital magazine rather than print to save money and costs. But when you look at it from a different vision Meredith Publishing also owns Ladies Home Journal and when you have a successful magazine it makes you the top publishing company in the world. Another publishing company that is a success second to Meredith is Hearst Magazines who owns Cosmopolitan and Redbook and they make tons of money making their two top magazines household names. I remember reading People a lot and I still do and when People came out it was also the number one entertainment magazine when they would talk about the latest movies and every single celebrity that would star in the movies would be featured but People started going downhill when they would focus mostly on celebrity deaths and celebrity interviews with titles such as "Farewell William Hurt" to "The Real Benedict Cumberbatch" and that proved People was changing direction. But now that Entertainment Weekly no longer exists in print the only survivors of entertainment print magazines are In Touch OK Us Weekly A Closer Look and Rolling Stone and as long as they survive fans will read about the latest news in movies and Hollywood
Bestie

[Hawkee]

I got a card from Entertainment Weekly during the time I got my last issue of Entertainment Weekly and they are switching me to People but I have never EVER gotten my first People issue yet and now that's May I still haven't recieved my first People issue yet. I wonder now that Entertainment Weekly is gone from print I wonder if they are messing with Entertainment Weekly subscribers since the last print issue came out? Because this might cause People to go belly up and lose readers
Bestie