REMA blog.

I don't usually dwell on the minutiae of my job here, but this is important enough to note. Today, Real Estate Mid-America, the magazine I've been editing for less than a year, and the direct successor of Real Estate Chicago, which I edited for about three years, ceased publication. The last issue is at press, and there won't be any more. The numbers just didn't work, as my employers explained to me at headquarters two weeks ago, though I was already fairly certain of that. That's publishing for you, and that's the bad news.

But it isn't that bad. I still have a job. The same job, really, in terms of where I work and how much I make. The company will be publishing something new in the Midwest, a quarterly business-news supplement to the national magazine that it publishes, Real Estate Forum. I will be the editor of the new publication come August, and I will also write features for Forum, and very likely write for other company publications (there are a number of paper and on-line titles).

About half of the magazines I've ever worked for have slipped beneath the waves, never to rise again. Real Estate Mid-America was a serviceable vessel, a workaday merchantman. All together (to continue the metaphor; not sure where it came from), it was crewed by ten, though not all at the same time. As the last man standing, I got to scuttle it, and watch it go down from a seat on a dinghy. Time to go build a new ship.