Farewelling madison magazine after 100 issues - Women's Agenda

Farewelling madison magazine after 100 issues

Tomorrow afternoon the team from madison magazine will gather at a bar in Surry Hills to celebrate the life of their beloved publication. There will no doubt be a mixture of tears, laughter and lots of retold stories, just as there would be at any wake.

The June 2013 edition of madison magazine will be its final. Exactly 100 issues after ACP launched a salvo at Pacific Magazines’ Marie Claire, the dream has reached a shattering conclusion. That may sound dramatic to most. For editor Lizzie Renkert and her team it is undoubtedly one of the more painful experiences in their lives to date.

Perhaps it was the market. Maybe it was the business model. It could have been the execution. None of that matters anymore to the team of people who worked for the magazine. It’s happened to the best of us. I have launched and edited a number of publications over the years and while many of them flew, a couple didn’t last. The reasons were a combination of the market, the business model and the execution. In the greater scheme of things the run-rate makes sense. Hindsight can offer wonderful clarity.

Lives move on. Careers are reborn, sometimes in a direction that they may not have taken had it not been for an event like this. I view endings like this as a new beginning and I hope the madison team can too.

I reflected on this while watching the documentary: Page One: Inside The New York Times, recently. The onslaught of the digital age unseated a number of journalists who thought they had a lifetime career with the newspaper. Positions that were once key were no longer deemed necessary. It’s a bitter pill this new media reality.

The big personalities on the paper were clearly the ones who seemed sure to remain essential on any platform. Media writer David Carr has developed a style that makes him a compelling read in any medium. People want to read his take-no-prisoners view of a situation. His unique approach has lifted media reporting on The New York Times to something worth paying for. And ultimately that’s how journalists and publications will be judged forever more.

As the madison team heads into the world to begin carving out new career opportunities, it’s how they manage their individual identities that will become increasingly important. We wish them well and look forward to hearing about the next phase of their careers.

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