E&P fires its editor & its staff

The new owners of Editor & Publisher magazine, which for more than a century was considered a bible of the newspaper industry, jettisoned what was left of its old editorial regime, Maynard Institute’s Journal-isms reports today.

The magazine’s previous owner, Nielsen Business Media, closed it last December; it was bought and revived a few weeks later by Duncan McIntosh Co., publisher of Boating World, Sea Magazine, America’s Western Boating Magazine, and FishRap magazines. The new owners did not retain previous editor Greg Mitchell and instead elevated 26 year E&P veteran Mark Fitzgerald to that post and kept on two reporters.

“It was 10 of the weirdest months of my life,” Fitzgerald told Journal-isms. “It was almost like working with a cult with these people. I got no clear explanation of why we got fired.”

What’s next for Fitzgerald? From Journal-isms:

He said he did not know what he would do next because “I literally have been working 24/7. I just haven’t had a moment to think about it.”

Folio magazine recalls that “at the time of the purchase, McIntosh told FOLIO that the magazine had ‘a great staff’ and that the magazine was ‘more vital now than ever’.”