According to the latest ABC figures released yesterday, in the first half of 2009 the only two paid-for titles in the men's lifestyle sector to show year-on-year circulation increases were Men's Health and Men's Fitness.

Fitness title Men's Health not only celebrated its 15th consecutive year-on-year increase, but overtook lads' mag FHM as the top-selling men's magazine in the UK. The two biggest titles in the men's market - ShortList and Sport - are given away free.

The ABC figures also revealed that car and home decoration magazines have suffered sharp circulation declines.

Today comes news of the latest round in the battle by publishers to charge for their titles' content online: a new payment platform going by the name of Journalism Online has attracted around 500 newspapers and magazines and is expected to launch later this yesr. The company will provide a service whereby users will be able to log in once and then access news from a variety of different sites.

The company's founders hope that the service will enable participants to earn an extra US$50-US$100 per subscriber from the most active 10% of users.

Publisher McGraw Hill is looking to sell 80-year-old financial magazine Business Week. Its ad revenues fell by a third to US$77.8m in the first half of 2009 and its average circulation has dipped to 936,000.

The investment bank Evercore has been appointed to sell the magazine, although there are not very many companies in the market to buy failing print titles at the moment. One commentator expressed a belief that "they'll end up giving it away". A realistic possibility seems to be a US$1 sale deal similar to the one struck when OpenGate acquired TV Guide back in October 2008. That's if a buyer can be found at all; we watch with interest.

Newspaper and magazine publishers are backing the development of rivals to the Kindle e-book reader, as they seek more control over subscriptions and a better platform for advertising.

Further woe in the US magazine market: Condé Nast has announced that its high-end business glossy Portfolio, launched in 2007, is to close. Circulation for 2H 2008 was just under 450,000, and the title had dropped from 12 to 10 issues a year by last October. Advertisers have been cutting spend savagely as Portfolio's target market of high earners has drawn in the horns as the economic crisis continues.

The demise of men's free weekly magazine Sport is just one recent development among many leading some to raise questions about the free sector, says the FT today.

It is not just free titles that are struggling, of course - long-standing paid monthlies Maxim and Arena are being closed down, and weekly titles Zoo and Nuts both suffered double-digit year-on-year percentage falls in circulation in the second half of 2008. However, free titles' dependence on advertising revenue makes them particularly vulnerable to a downturn. Top of the class recently has been ShortList, launched in 2007 and distributing more than half a million copies a week - but even it made considerable annual losses in the year to August 2008 (its first year of trading) amounting to £2.7m on turnover of £3.1m.

Douglas McCabe of Enders commented:

"The free business model is now troubled and, as with general print media, is under severe pressure. Free newspapers, for example, are making huge losses. The situation at ShortList is difficult to judge because a lot is out of its hands. If the market was buoyant and costs were kept down, then why shouldn't it survive? But, if the market stays depressed, who knows?"

Free magazine Sport has ceased publication after its French publisher, Sport Media & Stratégie, went into administration.

In response to difficult trading conditions and sharp falls in advertising, countless newspaper and magazine titles have either abandoned their paper editions to become online-only, or closed entirely.

This week, two magazines - The Ecologist and Maxim - announced that they would cease the print publication of their titles and switch to offering just digital versions. Online-only publishing is, however, seen by many as a prelude to closure of a publication; income from cover price sales disappears and the revenues generated from paper advertising usually exceed those that can be achieved online.

In other news, the advertising recession has triggered a crisis at Bristol's local newspapers. The volume of advertising has dropped considerably in the Bristol Evening Post and sister paper the Western Daily Press, while the Evening Post and the Daily Press have experienced heavy job losses.

Time Warner yesterday reported a US$16 billion loss in the fourth quarter after taking further write-offs against the value of its cable, magazine and AOL operations. As a result of the economic downturn, cash-strapped customers have been cancelling subscriptions and advertising revenues are down.

The company has announced almost 2,000 job cuts at its AOL and Time Warner Cable divisions.

According to figures from the Publishers Information Bureau, the number of ad pages in US magazines dropped at an ever faster rate throughout 2008. In the first quarter of the year, the fall was 6.4%, followed by 8.2% in the second, 12.9% in the third and an eye-popping 17% in the final three months of the year.

Advertisers in the auto, home furnishings and financial services sectors all reduced their ad pages bought by double-digit percentages year-on-year.