Is “NME” Going To Abandon Its Print Edition?

noah | October 25, 2007 12:30 pm
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Tucked below the “Steven Tyler wears beige Crocs and has painted toenails” item in today’s issue of the British gossip e-rag Popbitch was this nugget: “Rumours abound that the print version of the NME is to be closed, leaving the 55-year-old music paper as a web-only operation.” Oh, realllllly? Well, given that the cover of the current issue is at left, maybe moving to an online-only perch would at least help the British rag stay a little more abreast of today’s music. But will a Web-based NME carry the same clout that the print edition does? Some recent anecdotal evidence suggests that it might not, as the Popbitch item goes on to point out.

“Time for NME.com to launch some more eye-catching stunts like their campaign to “right a historic wrong” by getting the Sex Pistols’ re-released God Save the Queen to number one. It entered the charts at… number 42.”

No. 42? In a country where the reissue of Phil Collins’ “In The Air Tonight” entered the charts at No. 16 a few weeks back? Oh, my. Printing magazines may be expensive, but surely that cost is minimal when you think about the price paid by losing your cred.

Popbitch [Official site]