Salon.com is another classic example of what you mentioned [j].
They've really had to cut their writing but at the same time the magazine's critical edge both in politics and arts has somewhat weakened. I think it feels like that mainly because of changes in quantity rather than quality, but others take a harder stance against the magazine's current state.
Of course the web is full of such examples.

In print even 'business case' publications have to put up a fight. There's been several deaths to magazines started when the economic upswing who have already ceased to be published. Recently, Red Herring ended, but I guess that has a lot to do with the it-industry being less potent than a few years ago. Wired managed to get established so early that that it's become a kind of symbol for the 'wired era'.

Oh, but this piece of war news from The Guardian is related (kind of...)
In a big medium bosses are more touchy than in an independent medium.

[...with us or against us...]
NBC has fired the Pulitzer prize-winning reporter Peter Arnett after he gave a controversial interview to Iraqi state television in which he said American military plans had failed.
posted by [jm.] at 12:17

About Shift no longer available in print:
It's a pity.
I wonder about magazine projects though - if there's a business case behind them then they typically stick around for a while (more ads, marketing, buyers etc.) but they're sometimes not as interesting as the magazines like Shift - started from the _shift culture as [d] mentioned.
ie. Wired vs. Sift as [jm] mentioned.

And then these _shift culture magazines are interesting but can't pay the bills or then their founding members get bored, or they get bought out and transformed into a media / business case magazine - taking some of the interest away...
posted by [j] at 08:34

[jm] i was reading your post. and now... that I see _shift is gone, i have to admit that i miss it. it was good to know there is local canadian magazine supporting media and web and technology. the print version went down, but i have faith that people that made _shift and dedicated so much of their time, and effort into building the _shift culture will continue online... it's easy to survive in digital form :) - we know that much. if they can pay the bills... that is.
posted by [d] at 02:11