By Leah Taylor

An interview with Greg Marx of the Columbia Journalism Review illustrated just how devastating the news to discontinue publication of the 125-year-old Editor and Publisher was to both its editor and staff.

“It was kind of a shock to us, only tempered by the fact that for the past month there had been online reports that there was some sort of deal that Nielsen was about to sell a bunch of magazines. And according to the reports, we were part of that deal; in other reports, we weren’t,” editor Greg Mitchell said.

Part of the shock came from the fact that the publication had been doing increasingly well in recent years. Since 2003, the decision was made to turn from a weekly to a monthly publication, which resulted in marked success including the increase in popularity of its website. That is until just last year when the economic recession brought on financial hardship throughout the media industry.

“Even before I got here, E&P was practically the first magazine that was really promoting newspapers going on the Web. And when I came in here, I really pushed for our own Web site to become more prominent. We made a big impact on the Web, going back seven or eight years ago. It really helped make us more of a force,” Mitchell said.

The force that the publication has become is the reason why staffers are hoping that someone will step forward and offer to change its now imminent fate.

Meanwhile individuals like Mitchell are encouraging the public to speak up and against Nielsen’s decision. “They can contact me, I’m going to be here for a couple weeks,” Mitchell said. “When publications learn they’re going to go out of business, there’s always speculation about someone stepping forward, and it rarely happens. But I would hope in this case it might.”

Read the entire interview here.