A week after the departure of its most recent editor, Milwaukee Home and Fine Living has apparently gone out of business.
Sources tell Pressroom Buzz the magazine laid off employees and closed its offices last week.
Jill Williams, deputy managing editor for features, entertainment & new products at the Journal Sentinel, whose portfolio includes the magazine, did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday morning.
Employees learned of the decision to close the magazine after former Editor Rob Bundy left the publication two weeks ago.
Reached this week, Bundy praised Journal Sentinel publisher Betsy Brenner, who spearheaded the newspaper company’s acquisition of the magazine nearly four years ago. He limited his comments to appreciation for his staff and for the publication under his tenure.
“We celebrated people that didn’t always get celebrated. Sub-contractors. Artisans. People who make things. People who created things,” Bundy says. “I remain very proud of the fact that my team put out 32 issues of good content – as many as 12 issues a year with an editorial staff of three.”
Milwaukee Home was one of two magazines that Journal Communications acquired from Trails Media Group in February 2007. The other is Wisconsin Trails, a bimonthly nature magazine.
The acquisition turned out to be poorly timed, coming just as the national and local housing markets were entering a steep recession. The magazine has reportedly never made money.
With a tiny masthead – and much of its content written by its editor or assistant editor – Milwaukee Home appears to have been run on a shoestring.
Originally a bimonthly, the magazine was converted to monthly distribution shortly after JCI bought it. Rather than a bible for local do-it-yourselfers, it billed its mission as focusing on “upscale, quality and insightful designs, from traditional to contemporary.”
The economy, though, has been challenging for upscale publications.
It also has been challenging for JCI’s special media properties. Milwaukee Home is the third such publication the company has closed or shed in recent years. MKE, a free, alternative weekly-style paper, folded in 2008, and control of Aqui Milwaukee, an English-language magazine targeting Hispanic readers, was turned over to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Wisconsin last year. Publication of Aqui was to have been suspended until the end of last year while it was revamped, but it’s never been relaunched.
Whatever happened to Pete Millard?
The byline of Pete Millard, the Business Journal‘s venerable real estate reporter, has been missing from the publication since early June. In July, the weekly matter-of-factly announced it was hiring Sean Ryan away from the Daily Reporter to cover the real estate beat.
BJ Editor Mark Kass declined to comment on Millard’s departure, citing confidentiality of personnel matters.
Pressroom Buzz has learned, however, that Millard was let go after an arrest in late May in Grant County on drug, drunken-driving and weapons charges.
Until now, the case has been hidden under the radar because “Pete” isn’t Millard’s actual first name: It’s Lewin J. Millard.
Court records show Millard, 57, was arrested May 26 in Grant County on seven misdemeanor charges: operating a firearm while intoxicated; carrying a handgun where alcohol is sold or consumed; operating while under the influence, and also with a “prohibited alcohol content” exceeding 0.08; operating while his license was revoked for refusal to submit to a test for alcohol or controlled substances; and possession of THC and of drug paraphernalia. He was also charged with possessing an uncased gun in his vehicle, open intoxicants in his vehicle, and refusing to take a test for intoxication.
Millard was arraigned July 19 and pleaded not guilty to all charges. He’s scheduled to return to court on Sept. 21.
This isn’t Millard’s first run-in with the law. A Milwaukee County case is still pending against him, charging him with hit-and-run in a car accident Aug. 16, 2009. Court records in that case suggest that a guilty plea was being negotiated, but that the case was put off after the Grant County arrest.
The Dubuque Telegraph-Herald reported in May that the Grant County case arose after a man was reported shooting a gun near Ally Oop’s Bar in Livingston, Wis. The newspaper, citing police reports, reported that after the shooting, Grant County sheriff’s deputies arrested Millard, who had been driving a 2006 Dodge Durango on a county road. A police investigation of the truck turned up a Glock .45-caliber handgun, two loaded magazines, marijuana and drug paraphernalia. “Witnesses in Livingston told deputies that Millard displayed the handgun in the bar,” the newspaper reported.
Millard could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
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