Life Magazine, InfoWorld end printed versions

Good day for trees, bad day for magazines - in particular, the printed kind.

A pair of venerable print publications - Life Magazine, and our IDG sister publication, InfoWorld - announced today that they will no longer be buying paper in bulk.

Both will continue to publish online, however, and InfoWorld will maintain its events business.

This marks the third time going under for Life, which was dragged off the scrap heap in 2004 by Time, Inc., as a newspaper supplement.

According to BusinessWeek:

(Time) cited the "decline in the newspaper business" and poor advertising outlook as factors in its decision. Life had been carried in 103 newspapers, and competed in the Sunday newspaper supplement business with Parade, owned by Advance Publications Inc., and Gannett Co.'s USA Weekend. American Profile, a privately held supplement, targets smaller newspapers. ... Originally launched in 1936 as a weekly, Life was suspended from regular publication in 1972 and brought back as a monthly in 1978. It was suspended again in 2000, then brought back as a newspaper supplement in 2004.

As for InfoWorld, Editor Steve Fox announced the decision online today, saying:

Yes, the rumors are true. As of April 2, 2007, InfoWorld is discontinuing its print component. No more printing on dead trees, no more glossy covers, no more supporting the US Post Office in its rush to get thousands of inky copies on subscribers' desks by Monday morning (or thereabouts). The issue that many of you will receive in your physical mailbox next week - vol. 29, issue 14 - will be the last one in InfoWorld's storied 29-year history.

But let me dispel any other rumors. InfoWorld is not dead. We're not going anywhere. We are merely embracing a more efficient delivery mechanism --the Web - at InfoWorld.com. You can still get all the news coverage, reviews, analysis, opinion, and commentary that InfoWorld is known for. You'll just have to access it in a browser (or RSS reader) - something more than a million of you already do every month.

Network World will continue to produce a print edition for the foreseeable future, I am told.

In general, I no longer make predictions about the future of print magazines and newspapers, although, I suppose if you were to read the handwriting, you'd find it not on the wall but online.

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