After being issued continuously for more than 33 years, the print edition of SeaFood Business magazine will cease publication in favor of a more timely, all-digital platform for industry news dissemination, it was reported on May 20.
“We just need to reach our customers daily instead of monthly,” Mary Larkin, publisher of the magazine, told the Portland Press Herald. She added that the decision to shutter the title came after a survey of its subscribers revealed their preference for obtaining news online rather than via print.
Larkin is also vice president of vice president of seafood expositions for Diversified Communications, which some years ago waded into the e-media pool by launching SeafoodSource.com and an accompanying e-mailed news headline service designed to drive readers to the website. Seafood Business writers are regular contributors to SeafoodSource.
The Portland, Maine, USA-headquartered company, which produces the world’s two largest seafood exhibitions annually in Brussels and Boston, has greatly expanded operations during the past decade or so to become a large scale organizer of international trade shows and conferences that run the gamut from Hotel Australia and the Retail Asia Expo to the International Floriculture Expo, Spar Japan and Kosherfest.
SeaFood Business evolved from its initial format as a quarterly magazine in the 1980s into a bimonthly and ultimately a monthly publication. After acquiring its main competitor, Seafood Leader, in 1998, it dominated seafood industry reportage and analysis until faster-paced digital information outlets such as IntraFish and SeafoodNews.com, later followed by undercurrentnews.com, began posting daily dispatches and late breaking news bulletins.
An earlier sign of the fading print times was seen last October, as online news and information provider FrozenFoodsBiz.com was launched following the closure of Quick Frozen Foods International. That magazine, which was circulated among readers in the frozen seafood community and other frozen food production and distribution sectors in more than 100 countries around the world, had published continuously since 1959 before being shut down after the final issue rolled off the press in April of 2013.
In its heyday, Seafood Business magazine published thick show editions that contained hundreds of pages of articles and advertisements. But with the ongoing migration of advertisers from the long established print vehicle to online venues, coupled with the rise of postal distribution costs, thinner issues became commonplace. The May 2014 edition carried only 40 pages (including covers), of which approximately 17 contained paid advertising.
Meanwhile, Diversified’s non-print publication business has boomed as the company has made 20 acquisitions and launched more than 60 events since 2007. Most of the expansion took place under the leadership of Nancy Hasselback, who retired as president and chief executive officer last summer. A former commercial fishing boat operator, she began a 33-year career with Diversified as the editor of SeaFood Business at a time when the parent organization’s activities consisted mainly of putting out a few trade magazines and putting on several exhibitions catering to the fishing and seafood industries.
One of the events it acquired early on, the Boston Seafood Show, was developed into a huge success. It grew from an intimate gathering of some 42 exhibitors from New England and Atlantic Canada when first organized in 1982 by the New England Fisheries Development Foundation and the Canadian Consulate in Boston, to become the largest seafood show in the world after Diversified took it over a few years later. Now known as Seafood Expo North America/Seafood Processing North America, this year’s running featured 1,113 exhibiting companies occupying 197,430 square feet of space. The visitor count exceeded 20,000 seafood industry professionals.
As big and as profitable as the Boston show became, it was outstripped a decade or more ago by the European Seafood Exposition (known today as the Seafood Expo Global), which was launched by Diversified in Brussels during 1992. The 2014 edition, which concluded on May 8, attracted approximately 26,000 visitors who checked out stands occupied by 1,690 exhibiting companies from 75 countries.
When Ted Wirth assumed Hasselback’s position last summer, Diversified Communications was employing a staff of 800 persons producing more than 90 exhibitions and other products spanning the globe from North America and Europe to Hong Kong, Australia, India and beyond. With the folding of the SeaFood Business print magazine there reportedly will be one less person on the payroll, its editor. Other staffers will remain on board contributing online articles.
Meanwhile, the company continues to grow its trade show and events portfolio, having acquired Bangkok-based Kavin Intertrade Co. Ltd., a leading international exhibition organizer in Thailand, in January.
“Our growth strategy is to further the company’s diversification of risk through events serving different industries, in different geographies, with different formats,” said President and CEO Wirth. “Launching to broaden the scope of our operations and provide further diversification in these areas has been our practice for the last decade.” – JMS
