My guess (as someone who worked for a decade+ as a journalist before leaving to create http://recent.io/) is increased competition for readers and advertising dollars. What <guywithabike> said is correct, especially the decline of print. Who wants to wait a month or two to find out more about yesterday's watch announcement? How many HN readers are actually paying for a print subscription to MacWorld?

Also, even if MacWorld moved entirely online, it's not like its web site is one of the only places to find this info, as the print magazine was in the 1980s. A lot of news organizations that are fierce competitors now simply didn't exist a decade or two ago. Hence today's major layoffs as opposed to reassigning the existing staff to the web. (When I look at the Recent.io knowledge graph, the top of the list of news organizations that cover Apple includes: Fool.com, Cult of Mac, Silicon Alley Insider, BGR, and TUAW.)

I wouldn't be surprised to see MacWorld with legacy costs and pay structures that make it less competitive against these upstarts.

Some of the ex-MacWorld journalists who are freshly unemployed are looking for jobs, so if you know of anyone who's hiring in this area, I'm sure they'd appreciate the pointer: https://twitter.com/PhilipMichaels/status/509752573763407873 https://twitter.com/jsnell/status/509749300683735041 https://twitter.com/danfrakes/status/509756139831975936