The Liberal Democrat magazine AdLib is to cease publication

When I joined the Liberal Party it published a weekly newspaper - Liberal News. This became Liberal Democrat News when we merged with the SDP.

I applied unsuccessfully to work for it once and later became an (unpaid) columnist for many years. I even did the desktop publishing on a couple of issues.

Liberal Democrat News ceased publication shortly after the party went into coalition with the Conservatives.

Its replacement, we were assured, would be a revamped AdLib magazine.

This did manage to appear monthly for a while - I wrote for it in those early days, but found this (literally) a thankless task. Then it faded away.

Today I received an email from the party's "Director for People" telling me that AdLib is to cease publication. You can find it reproduced without comment on Lib Dem Voice.

This tells me, improbably in both cases, that AdLib is "much loved" and costs as much to produce as "the entire staffing budget for the Party's Membership Department!"

It's replacement will be an improved AdLib blog.

I did not know there was an AdLib blog, but it turns out that there is.

Maybe I am just an old fogey and the future for member communications does lie entirely online. But the fact that no one has thought to add the AdLib blog to the LibDemBlogs aggregator does not fill me with confidence.

Anyway, if you want to know what is going on in the Liberal Democrats you can always subscribe to Liberator.