Weekly Scoop closed

Weekly Scoop, Torstar's energetic run at finding a place for itself in the crowded celebrity publication field, is closing. Staff were told today. According to a terse press release on the Torstar website, if you bought the issue distributed last Friday, June 9 it's now a collector's item; there will be no more. What will happen to the 27 employees involved? Not yet announced.

"This was a difficult decision to make and it is in no way a reflection on the strength of the Weekly Scoop team or the quality of their work," Greg Loewen, vice-president for marketing and new ventures at the Toronto Star, Canada's largest-circulation newspaper, said Monday in a release.

"Our team produced a first-class publication and feedback from our readers has been very positive. However, the ramp-up in newsstand sales has been slower than we had projected."

To read earlier stories on the Scoop, click here and here.

[UPDATE: it was surprising, and a little sad, to hear from a posting in mastheadonline (sub req'd) that the average sell-through of Weekly Scoop was actually something like 35,000 a week, or about 30% of its draw. That's a long way from the target 60,000 Torstar was expecting when it launched.]