Florida biz magazine to cease publishing

The Maddux Business Report, a monthly business magazine in the Tampa Bay area, will publish its last edition with the June issue, according to a story in the Tampa Tribune.

Michael Sasso writes, “Carlen Maddux, president and owner of the St. Petersburg-based magazine, said the downturn in advertising has hit the publication hard. Its cash flow has been ‘alright’ recently, but as he was making projections for the rest of 2010, he decided the situation potentially could get much worse, Maddux said.

“The magazine had just seven employees, including Maddux, because many of its articles were penned by freelancers. The magazine has a circulation of about 14,000.

“For now, he’s a little unclear about his company’s future, he said.

“Maddux won’t do a full-scale online magazine, because he hasn’t found a business model that works – a problem that plagues even much larger news publications.”

Read more here. Maddux was a former St. Petersburg Times reporter before starting the magazine in 1984.

A brief on the Tampa Bay Business Journal’s site states, “Maddux intends to publish its Tampa Bay Corporate Guide at the end of May, a joint effort with the Tampa Bay Partnership and its member organizations. It was one of several annuals published by the magazine along with others in partnership with the Westshore Alliance, the Tampa Downtown Partnership, and the Florida High Tech Corridor Council.”