The Sky is Falling

Oh, crap:

Sky Publishing Completes Sale to New Track Media LLC

Sky & Telescope magazine becomes cornerstone
of newly formed media company

Sky Publishing Corporation, the privately held publisher of astronomy periodicals and books, announced today that it has completed the sale of its business to New Track Media LLC, an entity formed in the fall of 2005 by Stephen J. Kent and Boston Ventures. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Sky Publishing Corp. was founded in 1941 by Charles A. Federer Jr. and Helen Spence Federer, the original editors of Sky & Telescope magazine. Sky & Telescope is the world's most respected astronomy magazine, serving amateur astronomers around the globe. In addition to Sky & Telescope and SkyandTelescope.com, the company publishes Night Sky magazine (a bimonthly for beginners with a Web site at NightSkyMag.com), two annuals (Beautiful Universe and SkyWatch), as well as books, star atlases, posters, prints, globes, and other fine astronomy products. For New Track Media, which is based in Cincinnati, Sky represents its first transaction in a broader plan that calls for building a portfolio of consumer enthusiast properties, not all science-related, and largely through acquisition.

Scientific American bemoans this development:

As if the gutting of NASA's science programs weren't enough, astronomy aficionados have just taken another gunshot in the chest: Sky & Telescope magazine has been sold and, although the announcement doesn't mention it, a quarter of the staff has been laid off.

Sky & Tel is an institution -- the closest thing astronomy has to a magazine of record. I've known staffers there for over a decade and can say that, on topics ranging from DIY telescope building to Mars landers, they have a depth of knowledge and experience which simply can't be beat. They're the sort of people who'll go to an evening lecture and then stay up half the night writing about it, and rewriting, and rewriting -- until they find the best way to explain the subject to the interested layperson. People subscribe to the magazine their whole lives; they are not mere consumers but members of a community. I hope the survivors of this purge can keep things going. The world would be a much poorer place without it.

I don't know the details of Sky & Tel's travails, but presumably declining advertising revenues have something to do with it. Magazines in general, and science magazines in particular, also have to struggle with the tragedy of the Internet commons. Sky & Tel, like us, puts material on the web for free, which undermines our own business. None of us gets rich working at a magazine; we do it because we love science and want to help others understand it, too. How long that will last, if nobody can make a living at it, is unclear.