LOS ANGELES — Daily Variety is dead. Long live Variety?
The failing entertainment trade publication on Tuesday said that it would discontinue its five-day-a-week newspaper after March 19. Weekly Variety, a magazine published on Sundays, will also disappear. One print magazine, published on Tuesdays, will replace them starting on March 26.
Variety.com will also officially drop its four-year-old pay wall and become free online.
“We look forward to welcoming back longtime Variety readers,” Jay Penske, chairman and chief executive of Penske Media Corporation, which bought the news outlet for $25 million in October, announced in Tuesday’s issue of Variety.
Variety’s editor, Tim Gray, will remain on the staff, although his role will be diminished. Three new editors will take over.
Variety’s changes on the surface replicate the playbook successfully adopted in 2010 by a rival, The Hollywood Reporter. Once the dominant source of entertainment trade news, Variety has suffered from mismanagement, vanishing advertisers and faster and more aggressive blog competitors.
Deadline.com, an entertainment trade news Web site that Penske Media also owns, had 2.3 million unique visitors in January, a 32 percent surge compared with the same month a year earlier, according to comScore. Variety.com plunged 28 percent, attracting 472,000 unique visitors.
January is a crucial advertising month for the Hollywood trade publications because of the start of the winter TV season, Oscar nominations, the Golden Globe awards and the Sundance Film Festival. (The Reporter had 4.9 million unique visitors in January, a 10 percent increase; TheWrap.com, another entertainment news site, had 841,000, a 15 percent decline.)
Variety reporters like Rachel Abrams and Marc Graser still break news, and Hollywood readers continue to seek out columns by Brian Lowry, the publication’s television critic. But Variety, once valued at more than $350 million, has for years been bleeding from defections and layoffs; some of its freelance reporters say they have not been paid since November. A Variety spokesman said the company was caught up.
More layoffs are coming in the weeks ahead, according to two people with knowledge of Mr. Penske’s plans. Mr. Penske and Michelle Sobrino, who took over as Variety’s publisher in the fall, had no comment.
A Variety spokesman said the new weekly magazine would be the a larger size, 13 1/2 inches by 10 1/2 inches. It will also be a bound publication. Variety, which is 108 years old, has an estimated 25,000 daily subscribers, according to analysts.
Three journalists, each holding the title editor in chief, will be charged with Variety’s turnaround. Claudia Eller will leave The Los Angeles Times to oversee film coverage. Cynthia Littleton, most recently Variety’s deputy editor, will lead TV reporting, and Andrew Wallenstein, most recently a TV editor, will oversee digital content, according to Variety’s announcement.
Publishing a weekly was considered Variety’s only option, aside from moving entirely online, and The Reporter has shown that it can work. Variety’s challenge is that it is losing its competitive edge — a daily print presence — while also arriving late at the retooled magazine party. The weekly Reporter, run by Janice Min and Lynne Segall, already has a solid foothold there. Underscoring how competitive the world of entertainment trade news has become, Deadline.com did not go easy on its corporate sibling. Its headline covering Variety’s news: “Can This Failing Trade Be Saved?”
Article source: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/26/variety-goes-weekly-names-three-top-editors/?partner=rss&emc=rss