The Skinny culture magazine to close after 20 years

The Skinny, the long-running free culture magazine that has covered music, film, theatre and the arts in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dundee for two decades, is to close, with its September edition confirmed as its final issue. The announcement was made in a statement posted on social media, which the team said came with a very heavy heart after 20 years of independent cultural journalism. The closure follows the cessation of operations of Radge Media CIC, the company that published The Skinny along with the magazines Fest and GNAW. The editorial team said that despite its best efforts, it had been unable to find a way to continue the work at this time, and apologised to readers, colleagues and advertisers for the sudden exit. In its statement, the team attributed the closure to economic difficulties in the Scottish arts. Funding pressures across the sector, rising costs and the ongoing cost-of-living crisis had contributed to an increasingly challenging situation, the team said, adding that none of them wanted or expected things to end this way.