“BOOM TIME” screams the cover of the September issue of Shares magazine, which has just hit the news-stands. A boom time for everyone, it seems, except Shares itself, which will publish just one more issue before it’s closed down and consigned to the magazine publishing graveyard.

It
won’t be alone in that graveyard, of course, but it will be surely have
a rather different epitaph to all the other deceased magazines that
failed to survive in the Australian marketplace. While all the others
died because they lost money or didn’t attract enough readers or
advertisers, Shares (as well as its Fairfax stable-mate Personal Investor,
which is also being buried next month) is healthy, sells just over
60,000 copies a month according to last week’s Audit Bureau of
Circulation figures, and is one of the strongest magazine mastheads in
Australia.

So why is Fairfax killing a healthy sharemarket
magazine during a sharemarket boom, and another personal investment one
during a superannuation boom? The answer, according to Fairfax
insiders, is that Fairfax is so worried about the declining circulation
at its business flagship, the Financial Review, that it is
prepared to sacrifice two long-standing and healthy children in order
to try and save a sickly one. “They’re closing down two magazines that
are making money and they haven’t had any money spent on them in two
years,” a Fairfax insider told us on Friday.

Shares and Personal Investor are being rolled into a new magazine called AFR Smart Investor to be launched later this year, which is apparently supposed to help the flagging fortunes of AFR.

But
maybe the Fairfax executives who have made this bizarre decision should
start re-reading some of the numerous stories published regularly in
their own magazines and newspapers about the importance of building
brands. Shares and Personal Investor are both powerful
brands in their market segments that have been built up over decades.
They have archived a level of market recognition that most magazine
publishers would kill for (and we’re not talking about murder).

These
two magazines would be worth at least $5 million if they were sold
instead of being murdered. So here’s Crikey’s offer to the Fairfax
board: we’ll offer you $5 million in cash to acquire Shares and Personal Investor, and all their assets. That’s a firm offer. Kill ’em and get nothing, or sell them to us for $5 million.