I bought the magazine for quite a few years, and then stopped, and that was also a good few years ago.
I might be mistaken in what I have to write - but it's being written in good faith.
When I started to buy, I was quite impressed by the print quality, and also by the idea that I understood to lie behind its concept: a showcase of work for the attention of 'collectors' - as such. Later on, I started to see that I was perhaps thinking whilst wearing rose-tints: the real purpose, it started to appear, was to sell magazines like any other company selling magazines, but playing to the aspirations of a possibly higher-skilled group of photographers than some of the mainstream magazines which, in my view, sank into being little more than sponsored travel agencies for organized photo-shoots.
I didn't advertise myself regarding print sales - I wasn't doing digital and had no darkroom anymore; if not printed personally, I see very little photographer's art in the print: it's just a product, an artifact of a third party: you might as well just go buy books or magazines; nobody in his right mind sees an Adams monograph in quite the same manner as he would an Adams 'vintage' print, would he?
At one stage, I got in touch with a chap whose advertisement I'd noticed a few times, and he was forthcoming enough to admit that no sales had resulted from his placements.
Somewhere along the time-line, ownership was transferred due to reasons that seemed plausible at the time, but which seemed to mean that it wasn't making enough money at that stage to stand on its own two feet, and so external interest was required. Which is fair enough - happens with lots of companies.
But, it ended up - in my mind - as being little to do with collectors who, I'd imagine, deal with galleries/dealers and not through magazines such as B&W was.
It was already an expensive magazine to buy; it's charges for competion entries were quite high, and more and more I got the impression that it was actually all about milking photographers trying to get into the art market. Such people were simply its core buyers. And fair enough: every product is designed to a market.
And then, on top of that, you must add the present-day situation where, as with stock photography, the market is drowning under the weight of 'art photography prints' being flogged all over the Internet. (That some contributors to LuLa manage to sell their work that way doesn't make all that much difference to the overall picture.)
It might also have something to do with decorative overkill: I would never have believed that Athena would go tits up, and they were selling much cheaper yet good quality photography. As people realise they ain't gonna make any money out of their hobby, perhaps they also stop financing those selling them their dream.
As I wrote, I could be entirely mistaken, but that's how I see the situation regarding the magazine. I can't comment on its current state - it's been years since I saw, never mind bought it.
Rob