The encyclopedia · Strategy & Leadership · Strategic decision · 2023
Paper broke the internet with Kim Kardashian — ad revenue broke Paper
The downtown New York title laid off its entire editorial staff on April 27, 2023; two months later it was sold and relaunched under queer ownership.
Paper Magazine · Street Legal · 2023-04-27
What happened
Paper, the downtown New York magazine Kim Hastreiter and David Hershkovits founded in 1984, shut down its editorial operation on April 27, 2023. The entire editorial staff — between 20 and 30 people — was laid off in one day. Editor-in-chief Justin Moran stayed only until the end of May to finish the final cover.
The magazine had peaked as a traffic machine in 2014, when Kim Kardashian's 'Break the Internet' cover pushed papermag.com past 70 million monthly unique visitors. After that came the decade in which the social pageviews feeding the ad revenue quietly declined. Publisher Tom Florio — a former Condé Nast executive who bought the title from its founders in 2017 with chief creative officer Drew Elliot — cited economic headwinds and a depressed ad market.
The title did not die: Street Legal bought it in June 2023, two months after the layoffs, and relaunched it that fall under queer ownership with Moran back as editor-in-chief.
Why it happened
- Revenue lived on programmatic ads bought with social traffic; when the pageviews fell, nothing else paid the staff.
- A single viral moment — 70 million visitors on one cover — set a peak the everyday editorial calendar could never sustain.
- The 2017 ownership change bought time for reinvention, but no new revenue line arrived to fund it.
The lesson
A magazine that monetises viral peaks rents its audience from platforms — when the algorithm moves on, the ad revenue goes with it and nothing is left to pay the newsroom.
Aftermath
Street Legal acquired Paper in June 2023 and relaunched it that fall with Justin Moran as editor-in-chief and an editorial focus on queer voices. The 1984 print lineage ended with the April 2023 layoffs.
Sources
- Paper Magazine Shuts Down, Lays off Entire Editorial Staff — WWD (Apr 27, 2023)
- Paper Magazine Lays Off Staff Due to Economic Headwinds — Adweek (Apr 2023)
- Paper Magazine Set To Return This Fall — MediaPost (Sep 6, 2023)
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