A 20-year era at the Arizona Republic is coming to an end. An article in the newspaper yesterday announced the folding of Arizona Woman magazine, which has been published for two decades.
It is the third piece of bad news to hit Arizona media organizations owned by the Virginia-based media conglomerate, the Gannett Company, this month. Nearly two weeks ago, the company announced that tens of thousands of its employees nationwide, including more than 2,000 in Arizona, would be forced to take a week off without pay. A few days later, the company announced it would close the Tucson Citizen newspaper in March unless somebody aggrees to buy the ailing daily.
The Republic article said some of the regular content from Arizona Woman will instead become a section in AZ, another of the newspaper’s glossy lifestyle magazines. Otherwise, the article said little about the motivations for folding the standalone publication, including whether it was another move to cut costs within Gannett, the international media giant.
Len Gutman put it this way over at the Valley PR Blog: “Just come out and say it guys — this is another cost-saving move pure and simple. We get it already. The Republic is in trouble.”
Update: A reader writes in with a “typo alert.” This post originally misspelled the name of the magazine. It is Arizona Woman, not Arizona Women. Oops. Thanks for the catch! Readers here on the blog play a double role as editors, too.
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