New Matilda announced today it will stop publishing after 25th of June. The online magazine has been creating content since 2004 and has built the careers of writers including satirist Ben Pobje and national affairs correspondent, Ben Eltham, but failed to turn a profit.

Editor Marni Cordell attributes the decision to ongoing financial problems. “It probably won’t surprise you to learn that newmatilda.com has never operated on a profit. However, we had projected that the site would break even by 2010.”

Despite securing big advertisers including banks and Apple, New Matilda is one of a number of online publications struggling to make a business case for online journalism. When founder Stephen Mayne sold Crikey in 2005, ABC Online called the website “financially unstable”.

At the time Mayne commented “Despite the impressive growth of Crikey, financially it has always been a struggle and to this day we still have Crikey-related liabilities of almost $50,000.” In the five years since, online journalism remains anything but a get rich quick scheme.

There’s been a rash of book trailers lately from the sublime Wonders of a Godless World to the ridiculous Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls.

To makes sense of the latest publishing craze, Moby Lives have decided to run their own awards for book trailers. Their categories leave no doubt that Melville House doubts the usefulness of trailers including Biggest Waste of Conglomerate Money and Trailer Least Likely to Sell the Book.

But there are also salutes to the epic trailer for Maurice Gee’s Going West which scored Big House/Big Budget and the sparsely powerful I am in the Air Right Now by Kathryn Regina showing can be done with limited cash and maximum creativity. But we agree that most people will hit mute as they watch the winner for Most Annoying Music New Year’s At the Pier, a cacophonous mix of ocean effects and a downright whiny strings that doesn’t suit the children’s book it promotes.