The Wooden Horse Round-Up

Have an unstopping urge to know which magazines will fold next?  Read Jeff Bercovici’s “Media Brain Trust: Death watch edition” blog post here…

RICHMOND has a new home editor, Brandon Fox, brandonf@richmag.com. She replaces Carrie Culpepper…

COUTURE INTERNATIONAL JEWELER has reported the exit of editor Victoria Gomelsky.  She also worked for sister magazine NATIONAL JEWELER…

ANN ARBOR BUSINESS REVIEW will cease publication with the August 13 issue…

BELLEVUE BUSINESS JOURNAL is now online-only at http://bellevuebusinessjournal.com. Joe Kennedy, joe@bellevuebusinessjournal.com, is editor.

Never Profitable Magazine Sold for $1 Million

THE WEEKLY STANDARD was quietly sold in June by media baron Rupert Murdoch to Philip Anschutz, an oil and real estate tycoon, for $1 million.

Since its founding in 1995, it has never been profitable, but this is not unusual.  Small, Washington, DC-based political magazines like The Standard, NATIONAL REVIEW and THE NATION very seldom operate in the black – at least not on a sustained basis.  They all owe their existence to deep pockets for testing of new ideas and furthering the owners’ particular political bent.

Mr Anschutz is reputedly more closely aligned with Christian conservatism than the George W Bush brand of neoconservative fervor of using armed force to spread democracy abroad, which the magazine has supported during the last decade.  So far there has been no indication of an editorial re-positioning.