BREAKING: RADAR Magazine Folds, Again

Just like a few years ago, the re-re-relaunch of RADAR....has ended.

The New York Observer has it:

A source at the magazine and Web site Radar has just confirmed to Media Mob that the magazine is closing up shop, and that everyone has to clear their desks out by the end of the day. (Ed.: We'll keep updating in this space.)

We hear that there might a business arrangement to keep the web site afloat and that it will be sold to AMI.

Started by Maer Roshan in 2003, the magazine billed itself as a guide to pop culture, scandal, and style but soon folded. In 2005, Daily News owner Mort Zuckerman and a pre-scandal Jeffrey Epstein invested a reported $25 million in the magazine according to a report by Katharine Q. Seelye in The New York Times, but by December of that year, the magazine had been shut down again. By this time, Radar's ups and downs had become sport for Web site's like Gawker, which delighted in every gory detail of the magazine's demise.

There's a warning shot to all magazines and wannabe magazine journalists -- no one's safe.

UPDATE 12:30pm: The layoffs include former Gawker editors Alex Balk and Choire Sicha.

UPDATE 12:59pm: In another sign of the times, Radar's website survives.

(Ed's note: That's not the only sign. Another recent example is the e-mail newsletter of Ed2010, a great online resource for magazine jobs and internships. For a string of several days this week, the newsletter hasn't had a single lead on a job to post, and has been begging its readers for leads. An unprecedented event.)

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