-By Lucia Moses

Against a backdrop of rising costs and declining ad pages across the industry, Hearst Magazines said it would close third-place CosmoGirl! with the December issue.
 
The title is the second that Hearst has folded this year; company president Cathie Black, who made the CosmoGirl! announcement in an internal email today, earlier this year shuttered Quick & Simple, a weekly women’s service title.
 
CosmoGirl! publisher Vicki Wellington was reassigned to helm Hearst’s new Food Network Magazine, which launches in November, while editor Susan Schulz will stay on at Hearst to work on special projects. Other staffers may be absorbed elsewhere in the company. CosmoGirl!’s subscribers will receive copies of 2 million circ sister pub Seventeen, and the Web site, CosmoGirl.com, will continue.
 
While Seventeen speaks in the voice of teens’ peers, nine-year-old CosmoGirl! was meant to channel an older, more authoritative voice. Its circ stood at 1.4 million in the first half of ’08, down 1.4 percent, per the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
 
CosmoGirl! has been in third place of the top three teen books, and of the three has been hardest hit this year; its ad pages fell 15.5 percent to 527 this year through October, per the Mediaweek Monitor. Seventeen’s declined 8.8 percent to 693 while Condé Nast’s Teen Vogue were down 5.8 percent to 919.
 
The category has been in flux lately, with new titles coming and going. CosmoGirl! will be the third teen title to close in recent years following Hachette Filipacchi Media’s Elle Girl and Time Inc.’s Teen People.