After 80 years of printing a regular glossy monthly magazine with high-quality glam photos, Glamour will switch to digital after its final January, 2019 print edition. It hits news stands next Tuesday.
While still planning to publish special print issues, such as its annual Women of the Year award, parent company Conde Naste will otherwise push Glamour into the industry digital world, Editor Samantha Barry told The New York Times, which reported the news Tuesday. Online access will be free.
Glamour hired Barry, a digital journalist, last January. Previously, Cindi Leive served as editor for 16 years. Barry is a former executive producer for social and emerging media at CNN Worldwide.
Barry is credited with increasing Glamour's digital audience of monthly unique viewers 12 percent, to 6.3 million, reported the Times. Glamour's YouTube channel has garnered 110 percent more subscribers, to about 1.6 million.
"We're going to use print the way our audiences do — to celebrate big moments, like Women of the Year, with special issues that are ambitious, lush, and have longevity," she wrote in the memo.
Glamour's print circulation tallies about 2 million.
"We're doubling down on digital — investing in the storytelling, service, and fantastic photo shoots we've always been known for, bringing it to the platforms our readers frequent most," Barry wrote in a staff memo. "We'll be expanding video and social storytelling, with new and ambitious series and projects."
A Condé Nast spokesman told Variety on Wednesday there are no layoffs planned with the end of the monthly print magazine.
Conde Naste plans to continue publishing print editions of Vogue, Vanity Fair, Wired, GQ, the New Yorker, Allure, Condé Nast Traveler, Architectural Digest and Bon Appétit.
Some, like the New Yorker, offer limited online digital access for nonsubscribers and various plans for print-plus-digital subscribers. Wired and the New Yorker use paywalls that restrict the amount of free web content.
Reportedly, Conde Nast lost more than $120 million last year and seeks buyers for three of its magazines: Brides, Golf Digest and W. In 2017, it stopped the print editions of Teen Vogue and Self.
The publisher has also consolidated research and photo departments, and has leased six of its 23 floors at its headquarters at 1 World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan, according to The New York Times.
Conde Montrose Nast founded Glamour of Hollywood magazine in 1939.
Insiders maintain that Glamour's transition to digital is considered a success and that the magazine will prosper.
"Glamour is a brand — it's not just a magazine," Barry told The New York Times.
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