Press Gazette

After 43 years in print, the May edition of Press Gazette is set to be the last issue of the only independent magazine for British journalists.

Following parent company Wilmington’s announcement last week, there will be no news stories added to this website until further notice.

Wilmington does however plan to continue to run the British Press Awards and similar events, and there are also plans to add new community functionality to this site.

The archive of news stories, features, photos, blog posts, audio and video will continue to be accessible – and it remains an awesome resource for anyone interested in UK journalism.

Working for Press Gazette over the past six years – the last two of which as editor – has given me a ringside seat for the most dramatic changes in British media since Caxton set up his first printing press in Westminster more than 500 years ago.

And more than being just a spectator, Press Gazette has itself plunged into the information revolution.
Just over a year ago we launched our news aggregation blog The Wire – based on the principle that with limited resources you report everything you can on your website and then point to the rest.

Then in August, the magazine went monthly and the news team focussed purely on breaking news online, helped by a new roster of bloggers.

Subscriptions increased despite the annual subs fee staying the same following the move from weekly to monthly.

Meanwhile, web traffic has increased rapidly, typically up by more than 50 per cent year on year to as many as 150,000 unique users a month.

All this unfortunately failed to restore the fortunes of the magazine, prompting the publishers to decide to close it.

The success of the webste was in large part down to the efforts of our incredibly hard-working news editor, Paul McNally, helped by determined news reporter Owen Amos.

Big thanks are also due to deputy editor Julie Tomlin and associate editor (production) Pamela Horne whose talents and professionalism have kept up the high standard of the print magazine.