Inky Stinky Over Mag Bag

Staff and readers express remorse at the death of the 100-year-old Inquirer Sunday magazine.

by Deborah Bolling

Earlier this week, Philadelphians learned that more than 100 years of tradition is about to become a memory. Last Thursday, Philadelphia Inquirer editor and executive vice president Walker Lundy issued a company-wide e-mail, with the sad headline, "Because of the continuing down economy, the Sunday Magazine is closing in July."

While it's no secret that the entire newspaper industry has been adversely impacted by the 24-hour television news cycle, the immediacy of the Internet and economic malaise, bidding farewell to such a longstanding institution may take some getting used to.

"I'm sad to see [the Sunday magazine] go; a lot of people think it's a bad decision," says staff writer Melissa Dribben. For the past four years, Dribben, a former metro columnist, has written almost exclusively for the magazine. "I believe [the magazine] section ties for the second most-read part of the paper, after the front page. Readers really liked it. The magazine offered a different style of writing and different kind of construction of the stories. You could write about an issue that wasn't exactly breaking news, and then you could spend time examining the story's nuances."

Dribben says she intends to stay at the Inky and reintegrate back into the main newspaper.

"I'm adaptable, flexible, agreeable," she says. "It's still a great paper and you can still do really great work here, and that's what it comes down to. But I'll really miss it and I'm sure our readers will, too."

Sunday magazine editor Michael Mills, who has been pinch-hitting for injured editor Avery Rome (who is expected to return next week from a six-month leave after sustaining injuries from a fall), says that public reaction to the end of the magazine's publication has been cheerless.

"This is not the best week," he says wryly. "The Inquirer has received quite a bit of reaction via phone calls and e-mails. None of it has congratulated us for the decision."

Like Dribben, Mills, a staffer for almost 25 years, says he plans to stay on at the paper.

"We'll be putting out the magazine until we finish, and then [the staff] will be disbursed somewhere within the Inquirer," he says, "but I honestly don't know where."

In this business, as with most, bad news spreads quickly. The day after Lundy's unexpected announcement spread through the Inky newsroom, the entire text of his internal e-mail wound up on Romenesko's Media News, a daily catalog of the industry's juiciest gossip and a must-read for journos around the country.

Nationally, reaction to the Inky's move has been sour.

"We keep [our Sunday magazine] going because we think it's of major reader interest," says San Francisco Chronicle editor Phil Bronstein. The Chronicle is one of about a dozen major newspapers that still publishes a weekly Sunday magazine. "The magazine gives added value to the paper."

Bronstein says that for about a year, high expenses forced the Chronicle to publish its Sunday magazine every other week. Since the first of the year, however, it is again a weekly addition to the paper. "We believed we could make a go of it. We upped the page count and improved the stock of the paper. We're continuing to work on it because we get a lot of mail and positive responses to the stories. So far, anecdotal feedback has been good."

Along with the Chronicle, readers can still find Sunday magazines in, among other papers, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The Denver Post and The Boston Globe.

"We're actually involved in a strategy initiative wherein we've appointed a blue ribbon committee who will be looking at our Sunday magazine to find ways to grow it and make it better," says Boston Globe Sunday magazine editor Nick King. "We're going the other way from Philadelphia. We want to make it larger and more of a magazine experience."

King points out that although a Sunday magazine is costly to produce (he says his organization spends nearly $10 million a year on that section, as compared to the Inky's $9-million expenditure, but reports a profit), it offers readers a welcome alternative to daily reporting.

"The magazine has more personality and voice than is usually found in the newspaper," he says. "And you can also do wonderful things with photography. [The Inquirer] looks like they took the easy way out instead of trying to do something to make it a success."

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