The Engineer to scrap print edition and go digital-only

Centaur Media is to scrap the print edition of engineering title The Engineer and "focus all of editorial and commercial resources on growing the website and other digital products".

Two out of six editorial jobs could go with further redundancies within the commercial team.

An announcement on The Engineer's site from editor Jon Excell says: "The Engineer will live on and, we believe, continue to grow.

"We have big plans for the website, including making more of our vast and fascinating historical archive, building on our news and in-depth coverage and expanding our video content."

The Engineer will also be available as a page-turning digital edition "that can be read on a host of mobile devices". Excell told Journalism.co.uk the page-turning digital edition is optimised for iPad, Android and Kindle Fire.

The digital edition will be published monthly whereas the print edition was fortnightly. The last print edition of the title - which launched in 1856 - will be published on Monday (16 July).

A year ago Centaur scrapped the print editions of Design Week and New Media Age. The latter introduced a paywall 10 months later. Excell said the Engineer has no plans to start charging for online access.

Centaur recorded a £30 million pre-tax loss in September. In May the business-to-business publisher reported a 9 per cent increase in digital revenues, which it said represented 31 per cent of total revenues.

Last month it was revealed that Centaur was buying e-commerce and marketing firm Econsultancy for £50 million.

In The Engineer announcement Excell cites rising costs of production as one of the reasons for stopping the print edition.

"Increasing distribution and production costs, and the impact of an ongoing economic crisis on advertising revenues, have conspired to create a challenging environment for magazine publishers.

"At the same time, the rise of the internet — with its global reach, low production costs and unfulfilled commercial potential — presents some truly exciting opportunities."

The majority of comments on the editor's announcement are from people disappointed by the move from print to digital-only.

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