Poor design, lack of inspiration

As one commenter noted, the Enquirer is shutting down its standalone publications Design and Inspire. This is a big setback for the Enquirer's attempt to forge a new business model. Publications fail for two reasons -- bad content, and inability to sell ads. They suck, and neither readers nor advertisers will bother with them. Read below Margaret Buchanan's spin on this. She pretends to give "reasons" for shutting down the publications, but it's corporatespeak and it's dishonest. In the first bullet point, she calls the publications "superb", but then blathers on about a need to reallocate resources. The fact is the Enquirer keeps trying to do stuff on the cheap, and poor quality leads to poor results. And layoffs -- three people lost their jobs.

To: All Employees

From: Margaret Buchanan

I want to bring everyone up-to-date on some developments happening in our organization, with specific impact on the magazine division.

Inspire magazine will cease publication immediately. There will be one more issue of Design Homes & Gardens magazine (August/September issue).

The reasons behind our decision:

• While Design and Inspire were superb publications for a time and place, we must continually adapt our strategies and commitment of resources to keep up with changing times, shifting audiences and readership expectations.
  
  
• Based on increasingly sophisticated research, we are finding more effective means of delivering targeted audiences. That’s where we need to focus our resources. We have made and will continue to make investments in new ways of delivering news and information, with stronger results and return on investment for advertisers. Examples of some of those new initiatives: CincyMOMS.com, enhancements to the Community Press & Recorder newspapers, the online Data Center, Our Town magazines, and other ideas in the development stages.
  
  
• We need to be flexible and try new things to add to our core Enquirer and Cincinnati.com readerships. Design and Inspire, while high-quality products, duplicated much of our current strengths and did not add significant reach or frequency. The magazines were not delivering adequate return on investment for our advertising customers and were not delivering expected return on investment for The Enquirer organization.
  
  
• Times change. We learn. And while I am proud of the work many of you associated with the magazines have done, we will be a stronger organization as we tighten our focus on a stronger core Enquirer and Cincinnati.com and targeted initiatives mentioned above.

Margaret Buchanan