This is supposed to be a professional?

Magknits, a free online knitting magazine, has vanished with no notice at all except for a message from the editor that was posted in its place. Seriously, I was just there yesterday or the day before, and everything looked fine. Now the editor is throwing in the towel -- and apparently throwing out the baby with the bathwater too, while she's in a pitching mood.

A couple of points that particularly bewilder me:
"However, MagKnits has always been a huge investment in terms of time and effort and to date hasn't actually paid me any kind of salary."

... Did she actually expect to make money off a free e-zine? Has anyone ever pulled that off? I mean, Knitty's probably about the most successful one out there in the knitting community, and I always got the impression that the main benefit there was exposure for the personnel and it just kinda broke even. (Not that I have any idea for sure, but...) Furthermore, Knitty is quarterly; Magknits was, IIRC, monthly -- making it all the more difficult and expensive. And I'm afraid MagKnits was never as polished as Knitty. It just didn't look like a really professional endeavor; it came across more as a very dedicated fan effort. Honestly, I never realized it was supposed to be a serious business venture.

Seriously, so was there any sort of business plan involved before going into this? Market research? Anything like that?

Next: 'Someone made a comment about us earlier in the week that we would be stupid to run a business that didn't pay us a salary, this made us sit back and think "Yes, you're right. We would be stupid to carry on giving so much and getting little in return.'
Earlier in the week? Dude, it's flippin' Tuesday! Talk about snap decisions! Just toss away 4 years of work (including other people's work) on a whim like that? If I take her at her word, I can't think highly of that.

What's worst, though, is the complete lack of warning. According to the notice, if I read it right, this all happened today. You know, if I were one of the designers who contributed to the April issue, I'd be pretty upset. A pattern is a lot of work, to have it go up for a week and then vanish on one person's whim.

I gotta say, too, this can't reflect well on her print magazine, Yarn Forward. I mean, knowing that she has a history of flaking on a moment's notice on one magazine (albeit a free virtual one), I wouldn't be terribly inclined to subscribe to that if I were in her market. What if she suddenly decides Yarn Forward isn't worth the effort, either? Bye bye subscription fee, I suppose. And honestly, the web design of the Yarn Forward site doesn't instill a lot of confidence (nor has the magazine itself when I've seen it at B&N, which often gets British craft magazines.) The poor image resizing, the lack of sample content, the errata links that "will be available week beginning 7th April" (ma'am, I think you forgot one or more words there) that aren't yet active... What's really stylish is that the "free patterns" link still leads to Magknits. Except for one, the Cloud Bolero -- with all the images broken.

Maybe I'm just being harsh from the surprise and annoyance, but if Magknits was supposed to be a professional endeavor, and if Yarn Forward is still supposed to be one... Well, it isn't coming across to me as professional at all.