Child Magazine: RIP March 2007

No spring break this week for the Reaper.

Child magazine, which has been one of the mainstays of the very large parenting category, was visited by the Reaper today. Granted, Child is not as sexy as People or US Weekly or Vogue or Vanity Fair. But its closing does portend some rather ominous signs.

When was the last time time you heard of a major parenting magazine closing?

The parenting category has been Teflon for a very long time. As long as there were booming amounts of new parents, there would be no shortage of advice these magazines would dole out.

Child had repositioned itself as an affluent parenting magazine not long ago, perhaps anticipating the arrival of Cookie magazine, and to a lesser extent, Wondertime.  But the  magazine's DNA is with the very middle American Meredith Corporation, who is not used to marketing to the affluent. So while the price tickets on the items were high in the magazine, it was still a middle America designed product.

The very well-funded, designed and editorially sound Cookie appeared, kicked butt with its Conde Nast/Fairchild pedigree, and started making some big inroads.  Child was losing advertising for quite a while and then boom, Meredith pulled the plug.

Not long ago, the Los Angeles Times printed an article that stated moms were slowly abandoning the Today show and other morning programs for the immediacy of web sites and blogs. The closing of Child may be a reflection of that change, but it also may be a sign of things to come in this category, as well as the aging Seven Sisters.

Child was a class act, but we're going to kill two birds with one stone, so I'm trying to take every Kidz Bop album ever made with me too. You want your kids to like Sly & the Family Stone's "Stand" or Snow Patrol's "Chasing Cars?" Buy the originals!