The next edition of Jobboom Magazine will be its last. Jobboom’s new owner, Mediagrif Interactive Technologies, will no longer be publishing the esteemed and free employment magazine.
Eric Grenier, the magazine’s former editor, made the surprise announcement on Facebook on Wednesday. "Jobboom Magazine is no longer," he states. Launched in 2000, it was ready to celebrate its 15th year of existence.
This is of course a major loss for the magazine industry. Although free, Jobboom Magazine had a solid reputation for its quality content over the years. A regular on the podium at Les Grands Prix des magazines du Québec, each issue reached some 350,000 readers. Although predictable, its death is deplored by many of the independent journalists who wrote for it.
Counting the days
Once belonging to Quebecor, the editorial group behind Jobboom was acquired by Mediagrif Interactive Technologies in June 2013 for the amount of $ 65 million (the deal also included the purchase of the dating site RéseauContact).
The acquisition led many to fear for the magazine’s future. The general concensus was that its days were numbered.
The issue is that Mediagrif has never had any real interest in the information sector.
Based in Longeuil, the E-commerce company operates a myriad of transactional sites. Its best known website is LesPac.com, the Quebec-based classified ad site. Jobboom and RéseauContact easily integrate into the company’s current operations. Jobboom Magazine on the other hand… not so much.
“It is not Jobboom’s role to publish content that is of an editorial nature,” states Claude Roy, President of Mediagrif, to Les Affaires. According to him, the magazine’s profitability also weighed in the balance when it came time to make the decision.
With that, yet another quality magazine bites the dust in Quebec. One may wonder whether other publications on the employment world will seek to occupy this now vacant niche.
The closing of Jobboom Magazine led to the layoff of four people (out of a team of 10), not to mention a loss of income for the handful of freelance journalists who supplied content for each of its editions.