Ita Buttrose's Cleo changed Australian media — Bauer closed it at 44 years

Launched in 1972 by Kerry Packer and Ita Buttrose, Cleo was unlike anything Australian women had seen: frank sex advice, male centrefolds behind sealed sections, political coverage, writers like Germaine Greer and Norman Mailer. Its founding was dramatic enough that the ABC later turned it into the series Paper Giants. 'Its message: that women could do anything,' wrote former editor Lisa Wilkinson. 'In 1972 Australia, this really was explosive stuff.'

The arithmetic caught up slowly, then all at once. In early 2004 Cleo's circulation was 198,000, neck-and-neck with Cosmopolitan; by the end of 2015 it had fallen more than 20 per cent in a single year to 42,200 — half what Cosmo still sold. A 2013 cost merger had already folded its staff into sister title Dolly, and the editor of both, Lucy Cousins, stepped down when the end came. A redesign and beefed-up investigative reporting could not answer the fact that sex advice and fashion tips — much of it good — were free online, while readers balked at a $6.95 cover price.

On January 20, 2016, Bauer confirmed the closure, five days after dismissing the rumours as 'pure speculation'. Interim chief executive Andreas Schoo said the issue on sale February 22 would be the last, and that investment would go instead to a 'digital-first' Dolly and to Cosmopolitan. Founder Ita Buttrose: 'It's like a death in the family for me.' Mia Freedman, a former group editor-in-chief, was blunter about the cause: publishers' failure to adapt to the internet had been 'catastrophic for youth brands like Dolly and Cleo.'