2 Long-Running Internet Magazines Shut Down By AMY HARMON
Two of the Web's longest-lived magazines, Feed and Suck, said on Friday that they had suspended publication and laid off their skeleton staffs because they were unable to raise the money needed to continue.
Last year, with a $4 million investment from Lycos Inc. and Advance Publications, the magazines merged to form Automatic Media, which also runs Plastic, a site devoted to commentary on media and culture supplied almost entirely by readers. For now, Plastic will continue to run while the other two magazines seek new homes, company officials said.
Along with the offbeat online magazine Word, which ceased publication last year, and Salon, which recently began trying to make money by charging readers for some of its articles, Feed and Suck were seen by many as embodying the democratic promise of the Internet, which would unleash a diversity of voices on the monetone media landscape.
But the notion that independent publications could challenge established media concern because it costs very little to publish online has fallen on hard times along with the rest of the Web's early illusions. With about 160,000 monthly visitors, Feed, known to its fans as a hipper, interactive New Yorker, operated on a shoestring budget, as did Suck, whose estimated 200,000 readers valued its irreverence and endless self-references to its own cybermilieu.
Still, with a tiny combined combined editorial staff of four to eight and minimal operating expenses, the two publications never had enough of a marketing budget to reach beyond a core loyal readership or a sales force to generate advertising and licensing revenue. The purchase of alt.culture, an alternative culture guide and the introduction of Plastic also drained cash from Automatic, although the company had hopes that it could develop a new revenue stream. A total of 19 people were laid off on Friday.
"We are solid brands with reputations and readerships that are extremely loyal," said Stefanie Syman, Feed's co-founder and co-editor. "We just didn't have the scale to pull it off."
Ms. Syman said Plastic may continue in some form as a technology consulting business. Tim Cavanaugh, Suck's editor, continued to make a pitch Friday for a larger media firm to come to Suck's rescue.
"We have something of value," Mr. Cavanaugh said. "Someone out there must see the value in taking on our extremely low overhead and unplumbed upside."
But perhaps a Plastic contributor offered the best explanation for the publications' dire straits: "This has got to be some type of conservative plot out to restrict free-thinking attitudes," Star Temp wrote in the site's chat area. "I'm quite sure of it."