In an August 22, 2007 article on the Washington Post website, media critic Howard Kurtz discusses the potential shutdown of the American Journalism Review due to financial troubles.  Kurtz reports that AJR's situation was made more perilous by a lawsuit filed by the owner of the Santa Barbara News-Press over an article AJR published about turmoil at the paper. 

Kurtz writes:

American Journalism Review, the influential but financially troubled media journal, could face a shutdown by year's end.

Tom Kunkel, the review's president, said it is "more likely" that the magazine will be able to continue publishing next year, but that he must close a deficit of roughly $200,000 -- about one-quarter of its annual budget.

"It's always been 'The Perils of Pauline' with the finances of a journalism review," said Kunkel, dean of the journalism school at the University of Maryland, whose foundation has owned the review for two decades. He said there is "no guarantee" of survival but "we haven't been given a drop-dead date or anything like that."

AJR's situation has been made more perilous by a lawsuit filed by Wendy McCaw, owner of the Santa Barbara News-Press, over an article published nine months ago about turmoil at the California paper. The piece, like most of the magazine's articles, was written by a freelancer, Susan Paterno, and management was stunned to discover that its libel insurance did not cover freelance writers.

McCaw's suit, filed in state court in Orange County, Calif., said her newspaper was defamed in a "biased, false and misleading diatribe." Paterno's article described an exodus of staffers from the News-Press after McCaw's purchase of the paper, following her divorce from cellphone mogul Craig McCaw, and explored allegations of unethical journalism. The magazine later published a clarification of two minor factual points but has defended the story as accurate... 

Click here to read Kurtz's article in its entirety on the Washington Post website.