Glamour magazine to cease its regular print publication

In a digital world, monthly schedule doesn’t make sense anymore, top editor says

Yet another women’s magazine is moving away from print.

Condé Nast announced Tuesday that it was ending regular print publication of Glamour.

Two moves foreshadowed the change. Last year, Condé Nast reduced Glamour’s frequency to 11 issues a year, from 12. And in January, the company installed a digital journalist, Samantha Barry, as the magazine’s new top editor.

Although the number of Glamour’s paid subscribers has remained stable over the last three years, at around 2.2 million, Barry said it was time for the publication to break away from the printed page.

“This is my plan, because it makes sense,” Barry, a former executive producer at CNN Worldwide, said in an interview.

“It’s where the audiences are and it’s where our growth is. That monthly schedule, for a Glamour audience, doesn’t make sense anymore.”

The editor added that the magazine might still publish occasional print issues centred on its annual Women of the Year award or topics like power and money. Online access to Glamour will remain free for now.

Glamour’s digital audience has grown since Barry took the helm. The magazine’s monthly unique viewers have risen 12 per cent, to 6.3 million. Subscribers to Glamour’s YouTube channel have increased more than 110 per cent, to about 1.6 million.

Glamour is not the first women’s magazine to move away from print. Last year, Condé Nast put an end to the regular print editions of Teen Vogue and Self, and Hearst Magazines recently announced that it would stop publishing Seventeen as a bimonthly.

The end of Glamour as a regular print publication is part of a general belt-tightening at Condé Nast.

The publisher lost more than $120 million (U.S.) last year and has sought buyers for three of its magazines, Brides, Golf Digest and W. It has also consolidated research and photo departments, and has leased six of its 23 floors at its headquarters at One World Trade Center in New York City.

Glamour’s final regularly published print issue, the January issue, is scheduled to reach newsstands Nov. 27.