Death By Mail

So this is kind of weird. 

A week and a day after word came down that Radio & Records was being shut down, I received the last issue in the mail. Tucked inside the front cover was a letter from a Nielsen Business Media senior VP explaining the decision to shutter the publication. (Since R&R was printed on a Tuesday night and shipped to subscribers on Wednesday, the letter was probably being inserted in the magazines at roughly the same time the last group of R&R employees were being informed of their fate.)

It's strange and a little creepy to look at the magazine as a snapshot in time, knowing now what most of the employees didn't know then. It's sort of like walking through a house after its occupants die in a car crash. There are reminders of the deceased everywhere. 

There's so much unfinished business in its pages.

In what may one day be the answer to a radio-phile trivia question, financial guru Dave Ramsey has the distinction of being the last cover advertiser in R&R history.

Inside there are three full page house ads promoting the now cancelled R&R Convention '09, which was to take place in Philadelphia in September. (Consultant Jaye Albright, who recently received a refund of her R&R Convention registration fee, shares her thoughts here.) 

There's also a full page ad for another cancelled event, the 2009 R&R Triple A Summit in Boulder, Colo.

In a telling statistic, of the 21 ads in the final issue of R&R, 10 are house (read: not sold) ads, promoting everything from the convention to free job listings to the recently relaunched Web site. One full page ad, which bills the now-defunct magazine as "the industry's most comprehensive format analysis resource," strangely includes in its list 10 feature stories written by editors who were axed in the last round of budget cuts in March. 

The magazine's lone two page ad wonders "who will be this year's R&R industry achievement award nominees?" I guess we'll never know.