Hasta La Ideas

If you’ve ever spent time at a press check, which implies that you’ve been at the printer’s office for no fewer than five hours with very little to do, you’ve undoubtably wound up flipping through the trade magazines in the lobby. Sadly, one of the oldest of those is stopping production after 128 years. Late last week, American Printer, which catered to commercial printers and began in 1883 under the name Inland Printer, announced that its publisher, Penton Media, won’t be releasing any new issues after its now-final edition in August. Editor Katherine O’Brien wrote on the magazine’s blog, “…ultimately, there was no foreseeable model to achieve profitability.” Here’s a bit from Penton, speaking to Folio about shutting it down:

According to a spokesperson from Penton, the publication has been discontinued because “it was just not a model within our scope and it wasn’t a strategic fit anymore–we’re constantly looking at publications within our scope and if they don’t really make a strategic fit within our list of publications than we have to look at that and see what fits and works within our strategic realm, that’s the thought behind that.”

This week, Penton also wound up closing a second magazine, the much more insider-sounding trade, Paper, Film & Foil Converter, which was founded in 1927.

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