Now celebrity magazine set to close print edition

Celebrity magazine Now is to close its print run, with the last issue of the magazine going on sale on Wednesday.

Angie O'Farrell of TI Media, which owns the title, cited "the changing dynamics of the celebrity market".

"Consumers [are] increasingly getting their fix of celeb news and gossip from other sources that can break stories immediately," she said.

The celebsnow.co.uk website will continue. A consultation with staff is still ongoing.

The news of Now's closure follows a slew of magazine cuts following pressure from the online market and a drop in advertising revenue.

Glamour magazine reduced its run to two physical editions a year in the UK in 2017 and the US version soon stopped its print version altogether.

Men's magazine Shortlist was axed last year, as was NME which, after more than 60 years in print, shifted complete focus to its online presence.

Several so-called 'lads' magazines were axed in 2014 and 2015, including Nuts, Zoo, FHM and Loaded.

Now magazine came in for criticism last year when TV presenter Stacey Solomon was featured on the front cover and described as "boring", "desperate" and "cheap" followed with the tagline: "Why fans are sick of her."

The 28-year old Loose Women panellist shared the Now cover with her then 1.44 million Twitter followers, writing: "That's the meanest thing I've ever seen."

The phrases were taken from social media comments about the presenter and put alongside a picture of Solomon in a bikini, which she had shared herself on social media to encourage body positivity.

Solomon herself hit out at gossip magazines for making women feel as though "they're not good enough".

In a statement, Now magazine said: "[The story] was written on the basis of social media comments about Stacey and is not the opinion of Now magazine."

It added: "We do not encourage or condone bullying in any form. We apologise to Stacey for any distress our story may have caused."

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