Barry Diller’s media group IAC/InterActiveCorp (IAC) has announced that it will cease print publication of six magazine titles that it acquired last year: Entertainment Weekly, InStyle, EatingWell, Health, Parents and People en Español.
The publications will continue on as digital-only brands.
IAC spent roughly $2.7 billion to purchase the media company Meredith Corp. last year, publisher of titles such as Better Homes & Gardens, People, Food & Wine, combining them into Diller’s digital media company Dotdash.
The news about the print cessation was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, based on a memo from Dotdash Meredith CEO Neil Vogel.
The move will result in the loss of 200 jobs, less than 5% of Dotdash Meredith’s total staff. The titles' April issues will be their final print editions.
“We have said from the beginning, buying Meredith was about buying brands, not magazines or websites,” Vogel said in his memo.
“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.”
Print publications were on a lifeline for most of the past decade, with iconic titles such as Rolling Stone pairing back from a biweekly schedule to monthly, Esquire losing page counts and trimming back to six issues a year, and Spin ceasing print publication all together.
Google (GOOGL) and Facebook (MVRS) have eaten up a major of the advertising base, and Covid-19 further accelerated print media’s decline, bringing newsstand sales to a halt and shifting more readers online.
But Vogel insists that print isn’t dead, as the company will further invest in its 19 remaining print publications such as People, Better Homes & Gardens and Southern Living, by enhancing paper quality and trimming sizes.
Dotdash Meredith also reportedly plans to invest $80 million in 2022 in content across all of its brands. It has more than 100 open positions, which it said it hopes to fill with employees whose roles have been eliminated.
