At the time I left the FJ there was much excitement and talk about a new era of "niche" publications that would help rescue Booth/Advance.
In recent weeks it appears that the new era is over. After spending a lot of money to remodel and furnish a new office in the Journal building for the magazine operations, I'm told that the experiment has ended.
I only saw a couple copies of the slick magazine called YOUR Magazine and it looked good, but obviously must not have fed the Advance coffers enough to continue its publication although the website is still up.
The fare in the magazine was light, and much of it written by former colleagues which was very good for them. Sorry that another venue for colleagues to keep writing for money has ended.
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Booth, like many newspaper companies, a few years ago saw magazines and other niche publications as new sources of ad revenue to replace what they were losing in newspapers. But the magazine business turned out to be as crappy a business as newspapers when the economy went south.
The Detroit papers JOA, for instance, created Third Street Publications, a custom publishing outfit, with great fanfare about five years ago. But it has killed off most of the magazines it started.
It's all about online now, baby!
Those "Your" magazines were terrible, page upon page of "people at parties standing next to each other" photos.
The True North mag had some nice photos in it but it was over priced.
If the Flint Journal is making money off these weekly freebie crap papers they are having us deliver now rather than the people that weren't really delivering them, why don't some of you writers get together and start a weekly paper and website of your own?
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