The short, unhappy life of a shopping mag

In the last 18 months, any magazine publishing company that didn't somehow get on the shopping magazine bandwagon was so yesterday. Not at easy as it looks, apparently, as Hearst announced on Friday that it was closing Shop Etc. The deed was done, according to website Jossip.com, because advertisers just weren't that impressed.

SHOP Etc.'s staffers learned of their demise in the most Hollywood of publishing industry ways: Hearst chief Cathie Black marched into the office on 1790 Broadway, unannounced, and flanked by Hearst exec John Hartig and publishing director Michael Clinton. She called for the staff to be rounded up and summarily delivered the news about the magazine's shuttering. Shortly after Black gave the noon-time news to SHOP Etc.'s 40-odd staffers and corporate cousin Weekend, we spoke with Shop's executive editor Charla Krupp, who was devasted over her magazine's closure.

"This magazine is really on a roll," she tells us. "People are gaga over this magazine. They love it. The women who read it are obssessed with it. ... We just came back from focus groups, who reported it was an A+." But don't confuse Krupp's cheerleading the editorial – staffers "really killed themselves to come up with something new" – as any sort of naivety about the numbers game: "It wasn't a hit with advertisers. ... If you're not a million circulation [magazine], a lot of big companies" don't have any interest. At "just" 675,000 readers, SHOP didn't hit that target."