USELESS FRIVOLITIES — Magazines are folding. If we knew a sadder emoticon than :-( , we'd use it. Like :-((( but that just looks like a fat person with a sad face. Luxury titles. Shelter titles. Luxury shelter titles. Oprah shelter titles. Nothing is safe. But that's not the whole of it. This business of publishing is in such rough shape, the trade organization responsible for its health is all but abandoning ship.

To be fair, magazine publishers are ditching the Magazine Publishers of America, too. It's a two-way street, littered with David Granger's gimmick covers.

Hachette Filipacchi was the first major publisher to secede from the MPA, viewing the organization's membership fees as too costly during this economic climate. (This, despite, Hachette's own former CEO Jack Kliger chairing the MPA's board and railing against magazines who didn't pay dues.) Then American Media dropped out, taking Shape, Star, and some fitness titles with it. And now Bruce Wasserstein's New York magazine has left the MPA, despite status as an industry darling that not only made an annual routine of picking up its share of ASME awards, but also fighting against the economy with decent ad pages.

And now it's the MPA's turn to, well, turn its cheek.

A scene from 2005's AMC in Puerto Rico. Poolside chefs offer no hint of the coming doom.

It canceled the American Magazine Conference, the annual getaway for 400 or so top editors and publishers that takes schmoozing to a whole new level each October. Instead of beach trips in Boca Raton, as Mediaweek reports, "the magazine industry’s lobbying organization will replace the AMC with an event in New York focused on innovation. The date for that event has not been set."

The news didn't come with much surprise to the industry's top talent who are seeing the economy's effect on the publishing biz. Ad pages are down. Layoffs abound. Town car service is as expendable as ever. But the MPA's decision to shutter this year's AMC isn't something to tear up over — since it's evidence of what the conference, and the trade organization itself, really amount to. And that's an elite club of social networking.

You would think that in a time of distress — and 2009 will be one of the hardest years magazine publishing has faced in recent memory — the one umbrella that holds all the players together would devise a strategy to assist and aid and invigorate its members. Instead, the MPA has folded its arms across its chest, performed an about-face, and walked away from the disaster scene to let the magazines fend for themselves.

Or not.

Because for the MPA to have actually have done that, its annual conference would've had to be a can't-miss, indispensable event that's about strategizing, not tanning under the Florida sun. Or, wine tasting.

So good riddance to the AMC. It will return, surely, in better times. But for now, while anyone who still walks into the Hearst Tower or 4 Times Square considers themselves lucky to still have a job, the MPA's annual opulence conference simply isn't needed.

And probably never was.

[Photo: Flickr]