SmartMoney Magazine Goes Online-Only, Slashes 19 Jobs

The Dow Jones & Company magazine cut 25 jobs but added six to its expanded digital team as it eliminates its print edition

Add this to the list of print media's woes.

SmartMoney magazine announced Thursday it would cease printing altogether and laid off 25 editorial staffers.

The final September issue of the Dow Jones & Company-owned personal finance magazine will hit newsstands Aug. 14.

The 25 pink-slipped journalists were invited to apply for six new positions on SmartMoney's digital staff or for any of the 56 editorial openings listed on Dow Jones' career site.

"People are going more and more digitally for personal finance," Ashley Huston, a company spokeswoman, told TheWrap. "It's just a reality of the shift and the way people are consuming personal finance information."

She declined to comment on revenue generated from the print edition.

But its ad pages were down 23.4 percent in the first quarter of this year, according to the Association of Magazine Media.

This comes a day after News Corp. announced that it would begin cutting jobs in its Australian unit, News Ltd., in a push to focus on its digital media properties, and a week after New Orleans' leading daily slashed 200 jobs and scaled back its printing to three days a week in a bid to go digital-first.

Two years ago, under then-President Todd Larsen, Dow Jones bought out Hearst's 50 percent share of SmartMoney, which was founded as a joint Dow Jones-Hearst venture 20 years ago. At the time, Larsen said the move would allow for greater integration with the company's flagship publication, the Wall Street Journal.

But Larsen stepped down two days ago after his bid to become CEO was thwarted by Lex Fenwick. Fenwick, a former Bloomberg executive, spent the last six months trudging News Corp.'s British newspapers through the mire left by Les Hinton, who resigned amid the phone-hacking scandal.

Also read: News Corp. Names Bloomberg Executive Lex Fenwick CEO of Dow Jones

Dow Jones will continue to streamline SmartMoney with various other media properties.

Content from SmartMoney's website will also begin to be aggregated on its sister site, MarketWatch.com. This, the company hopes, will draw some of MarketWatch's 17 million monthly visitors to SmartMoney's humbler 2.5 million uniques.

"I am proud of the exceptional journalism that the hard-working and talented staff of SmartMoney has produced in recent years," Editor-in-Chief Jonathan Dahl said in a statement. "I look forward to seeing SmartMoney's legacy continue at SmartMoney.com."

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