They ran the company into the ground. They only people to suffer here are the LGBT readers of their declining publications. Neither OUT nor the Advocate has a voice anymore. We were raised on the Advocate for our source for serious news, it is now a lesbian agenda pamphlet. OUT once spoke to all gay men, it now speaks to a small percentage who buy Gucci and other fashion brands that have nothing to do with an average or successful gay consumer. I hope that they learned their lesson. Stay true to your base.

I agree unfortunately many gay centric publications these days focus too heavily on the city living, high brand consumer end of gay life, outside of the major gay cities, we face real issues that have unfortunately not been adequately addressed, as is clearly evident whilst flicking past the hordes of Gucci, Calvin ads in an attempt to find a "real" story. Ultimately they need to go back to their roots.

I beg to differ that Out ever spoke for all gay men. For a period of time time, those magazines had the benefit of being novel and unique against a landscape of other lifestyle mags, but that time has passed. The changing landscape of queer politics and lifestyle have fractured and commodotized into a thousand different groups. Just like there is no monolithic "black vote" supporting Obama, queers are more diverse than a single, static, unpersonalized sheaf of pages can speak to. (There is a slightly longer response/rant on my blog.)

Here here! I don't know if circulation is down due to the issues mentioned above, but we shouldn't reward a company for bad financial management. Someone had the bright idea to try to create a "gay media conglomerate" through buying up publications and websites probably with financing. The growth they counted on to pay for it probably never happened.

Why should I pay $20 a month for Planet Out or Gay.com membership when Manhunt and others are $30 for 3 months?

The Advocate lost it's way in the 90's with its "last page" editorials featuring the our supposed leaders telling us what to think (thanks Sully, Urvashi and Bruce). Out and Genre sold out to crass consumerism.

Instinct is the only "national" gay mag that's actually fun and interesting to read

It gives a glossy "vanity fair" approach to our live or die, bash or be bashed, social movement. Bring back the spirit of a feisty 90's "Outweek" in cyberspace. Paper is out. The age of materialism is crashing along with the stock market.

oops - the link to my response is here sorry :)

qjersey: the strategy in the early 00's (when everything on the interweb was tanking) was to bring several bits of queer media together under a single umbrella to keep it alive and survive. After they emerged from survival mode they continued buying things up rather than focus on what they already had, which did not help them.

I think Out is actually pretty good. You can criticize the New York Times for its stupid, glossy consumerist parts like "T" and Styles sections. But it still does good reporting elsewhere. Similarly, between the skin care advertorials are some good articles in Out.

No, the problem is that typical of big companies once the MBAs take charge who think they can apply what they learned in school to the real world.

Case in point: buying RSVP, letting it crash and burn, and selling for nothing to Atlantis, which did only cruises and did them much better.

hells kitchen: Out does not provide any valuable information. It is a publication that focuses on luxury goods - but never gives any practical advice on how to look like the guys in the outfits, how to find the outfit that works for your particular look or body style or how really to take your dressed up self out and show it off. It simply tries to be an apirational book — but offers complete emptiness.

It was inevitable. The stock has plummetted today, down 25%. Its essentially worthless. Planet Out bought LPI for 35MM, and now the whole company, included the online sites is market valued at less than 20MM. What a huge slap in the face to all the investors who had the wool pulled over their eyes by the woman at the helm. It makes all us girls look bad.

Terry: in between the underwear ads, I've read some good articles.

The bell finally tolls for the era of misplaced priorities in gay media business world. Whether it's what Planet Out did with The Advocate, or what Windows Media did with gay newspapers like Southern Voice and the Washington Blade, these debt plays diluted valuable community media outlets. And for what? For the buzzword-dropping egos of those days and deals, who are mostly moved off the scene now. Really shameful.

This is so sad. I am quite close to one of the original founders of PlanetOut. This person left the company once the PNO board brought in bad management that clearly did not have the best interest of the community or the original principles at heat. After struggling with the board and bad executive management, most of those from the inception left. The amount of love, work and dedication that went into building PlanetOut, for those who were there in the beginning was tremendous. It’s sad to see what a very bad board of directors and one of the worst CEO's out there can do to a company that has such promise. To those who were there in the beginning, thank you for what you created. I hope that PNO survives and is resurrected. Perhaps those who were there in the beginning will come back to save the company and once again represent the community well.

Karen Magee should hang her head in shame, although I suspect she is busy covering her ass to avoid a shareholder lawsuit.