UK’s recession-hit Press Gazette to close

The Press Gazette, a trade magazine which covers the UK newspaper industry, is to close, its owners, the Wilmington Group, said on Monday. The group, which brought the publication out of administration three years ago, said both the monthly print edition and the online version would close after the May issue.

The group said it had invested significant funds in hope of making the 43-year-old publication profitable. "Unfortunately Press Gazette, along with much of the profession, has suffered from a declining market during these years and its losses have increased," the group announced on the Press Gazette website.

"We have therefore been forced to conclude that the market no longer exists to sustain a commercially viable Press Gazette magazine," it said. The monthly magazine, which had been a weekly until August, had some 2,500 subscribers paying 115 pounds a year, while its website, offering free news content, was attracting about 150,000 unique users a month - a 50 per cent increase on last year.

Press Gazette editor Dominic Ponsford and his two full-time staff were reported to have been kept in the dark about the news.

Wilmington said it would continue to support the annual British Press Awards, which is regarded as a money-spinning event. The latest awards ceremony took place last week, causing raised eyebrows at the timing of the announcement.

The magazine has endured much upheaval in the past four years, having been bought by Wilmington from administration in December 2006 following a controversial period of co-ownership by former Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan and public relations czar Matthew Freud. Morgan and Freud acquired the title from Quantum Business Media in 2005.

Wilmington's then editorial director, Tony Loynes, was previously a PG editor and initially acted as its editor-in-chief. But he left the company last year in a round of redundancies as Wilmington sold off most of its business-to-business magazines.

Throughout its 43-year existence, the PG had been a weekly. But in August last year it replaced its weekly print edition in favour of a monthly magazine backed up by breaking news online.

Although the announcement mentions the continuation of the website, it will not carry any news content after this weekend. "There will be no journalism on the site", said Les Kelly, the managing director of Wilmington's media and entertainment division.

He added: "There will not be news coverage but we will develop the site to offer other services, such as training and freelance referrals."