The Grid’s gone

The Grid announced on Twitter this morning that it’s closing down for good, an abrupt move that nevertheless hasn’t taken Toronto media-watchers entirely by surprise. The weekly city magazine, a reboot of Torstar’s ailing Eye Weekly, attracted plenty of positive notice after its launch in May 2011—it won several National Magazine Awards, and was repeatedly named one of the best-designed newspapers in the world by the Society for News Design. Last June, though, the publication laid off a significant portion of its masthead and slashed its freelance budget. A recent redesign shrank the weekly’s physical dimensions, presumably to save on paper costs. The Grid‘s final issue comes out on Thursday; NOW Magazine, its main competitor, whose bottom line is cushioned by the sexual-services classifieds that The Grid eschewed, will survive as Toronto’s only remaining newsweekly.