I’m not sure where to begin with this post, as the story is kind of in flux at the moment, and I have kind of a love / hate relationship with JPG Magazine anyway, but…
If you haven’t heard of JPG, it’s a monthly photography magazine (and online community) made up of user-submitted photographs. I’ve been subscribing to the magazine for about a year and a half, and generally I really like it, even though they occasionally do things that piss me off.
On January 1st, 2009, there was a post to the JPG blog that said they would be shutting down the site and the magazine on January 5th, 2009. They basically said they’ve run out of money and couldn’t find any more.
I totally understand that these are hard economic times, and bad things are happening to companies all over the world, but this is exactly the kind of thing that occasionally pisses me off about how JPG does things. JPG only gave us 5 days notice before they planned to shut everything down. They buried the announcement on their blog, instead of prominently featuring it on the home page. And, even though I’m a member of the community and a paid subscriber to the magazine, I have yet to receive any notification from them directly about the closure. I know they have my email because they send me lots of other announcements. WTF JPG?
Since their initial announcement, they’ve updated the blog a few times saying that they are now in talks with several companies who have expressed interest in buying the magazine. They’ve given those companies until tonight to submit their bids, so we’ll see what happens.
Even though I’m not always happy with how JPG does things, I don’t want them to go away. I really do like the magazine, and the community. I hope it survives.
The future of JPG is uncertain to be sure, so if you’re a member of the online community, and you’ve gathered favorites or made contacts, you may want to make note of those photographers and URLs just incase the site suddenly disappears.