Back in May, I blogged here about the likely outcome of Manhattan Media's purchase of Harvard-related not-quite-an-alumni-magazine-but-really-more-of-a-brand 02138. According to the NY Times, the publisher had "visions of expanding it into social networking and event sponsorship, and then duplicating the operation for each Ivy league school."
This just in: that vision lasted 22 weeks. According to Media Week,
The company's CEO used some classic B-school jargon to justify the decision to shut down the magazine:
Translation: This turned out to be a waste of money.
Why? For one thing, the magazine has insufficient relevance, and does not fill a need or solve a problem for Harvard alumni. As an aside, in an attempt to be hip 02138 uses a lot of four-letter words (in addition to "Yale").
Bottom line — as I said in May — "Harvard alumni have been doing OK overall for about 350 years. 02138 needs Harvard, but Harvard doesn't need 02138." QED.
[Updated with additional coverage:]