We've all come to know and love launch parties, but not many magazines hold closing parties. However, a Winnipeg-based publication at the end of its life is doing just that this weekend.

Sandbox, a fashion/lifestyle/entertainment/culture quarterly consumer publication established in Sept. 2009 (it started as an online magazine) is shutting down, but not without a last hurrah. Besides, hosting a closing party isn't really a big surprise from this mag, which apparently held five launch parties during its relatively short life.

Meredith Corporation, a media and marketing company serving American women, has purchased Allrecipes.com, a property of Reader's Digest Association (RDA), for $175 million. Meanwhile, Masthead has confirmed reports that staff have been cut at the Canadian office of Reader's Digest for its French-language title.

A Toronto-based publisher is fashioning a new online magazine that will capture styles from around the globe.

Hina Ansari is the founder/publisher of Ramp1885.com, a new site that will cast a spotlight on the lesser known fashion centres, she said. "There's like a million and two fashion [publications] out there," she said. "A lot of the fashion [sites] out there focus on the main capitals — Milan, Paris, New York, London — what I wanted to do is talk about cities that aren't covered, that people don't really talk about."

SavvyMom Media is tapping into the talents of blogging moms in Canada with the launch of SavvyStories, a content curation platform that will mean revenue opportunities for the writers involved.

In the first phase of SavvyStories, "we are not offering a revenue sharing opportunity per se," said Sarah Morgenstern, publisher of SavvyMom. "Whatever monetization tools the blogger has in place already will be enhanced by the additional traffic that their presence on SavvyStories will drive for them."

SavvyStories

A new online magazine is aimed at "hip South Asian working mothers" and moms-to-be.

"As a modern South Asian working mom, it’s not easy to juggle family, extended family and a career while maintaining your own sanity in the face of cultural expectations," reads the magazine website, Masalamommas.com.

Gary Campbell, a veteran of St. Joseph Media where he last served as executive producer, is leaving the post to pursue other projects.

During his time with St. Joseph, Campbell also served as art director and "web guru in residence" for Quill&Quire magazine, while moving on to the digital team where he became (in the words of Andrew Crane, St. Joseph's vice president of operations), "an inseparable element of the success that Torontolife.com has enjoyed."

"I plan to spend the next few months pursuing personal projects that leverage my digital design talents as a maker of innovative things. I also plan to continue developing my Aggregation magazine project. Indeed, issue #7 is in the works now," Campbell said in a statement.

Gary Campbell

The Jan. 16, 2012 edition of Marketing magazine presents interesting data on ad spending for this year, particularly for print media.

The Marketing 2012 Outlook Survey Readership Study consulted 120 industry professionals for their thoughts, including biggest business concerns (one was world financial collapse) and plans for social media marketing this year (72 percent expect to increase time and resources devoted to it).

The Winter 2012 edition of the Ryerson Review of Journalism is out, and it offers up several treats for magazine industry followers.

Here are some of the articles inside this latest offering: