Farewell, Kirkus Review and Editor & Publisher

So who is going to write about the publishing industry now that Editor & Publisher is folding?

Nielsen, owner of E&P and Kirkus, is selling Hollywood Reporter and Billboard but closing down the venerable Kirkus Review and E&P. The fact that the company couldn’t find a buyer for the two is an indicator of the demand for print. That is, not much.

It is ironic that at a time when we need a good word more than ever, a time when the signal to noise ratio is getting worse, that we are losing independent media voices. There are a lot of bad books out there. Kirkus was a respected source of literary criticism. Sure, there are other reviewers equally as venerated — the New York Times Book Review for one. But can we afford to lose any sources?

As for E&P, well, it was a journal that covered a dying industry. There was nowhere it could go. Once many years ago I edited a computer magazine that covered one company’s products. That company went bankrupt, and when it came out of bankruptcy, it tried to reinvent itself. However, its products — minicomputers — were obsolete compared to PCs. So when its market collapsed in on itself, so did the magazine. The print newspaper industry has become obsolete, and E&P never had a chance.

I still am holding out hope that some white knight will resurrect Kirkus Review, but I don’t think there’s anything that could have been done for E&P. Not even an online platform such as I described in my last post could have saved it.

Farewell to two venerable institutions.