According to a recent report from the Audit Bureau of Circulation, business magazines Forbes and BusinessWeek fell short of their stated circulation promised advertisers. You can read about it in Jon Fine’s On Media blog.
To date, the circulation scandals had been primarily confined to daily newspapers, so these revelations are not too good for the magazine business and for business journalism. When biz magazines don’t deliver the circulation that they promise advertisers, then they can’t charge as much for advertising as they had in the past. And when they can’t charge as much for advertising, the revenue falls. When revenue falls, the bean counters get nervous and want to cut costs. And we all know how they’ve been cutting costs recently — by cutting reporters and editors.
I also wonder if the circulation drop at BusinessWeek, where I used to work, had anything to do with the announcement earlier this month that they were dropping the Asian and European editions.
Oh yeah, Merry Christmas.
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Chris:
Thanks for the linkage. One thing to note: The BusinessWeek circulation situation dates back to 2004--well before the Asian and European editions were shuttered. And the circulation in question only included the US edition.
Much as I'd like to link circ problems at magazines to job cuts, what's happened at BusinessWeek and Forbes (and a bunch of other magazines) has less to do with staff reductions and more to do with arcane, way-down-in-the-plumbing rules about how circulation is counted for magazines.
Jon