Insurance West Closes Its Doors After More Than 65 Years

Insurance West, a Seattle-based magazine owned by The National Underwriter Company, will cease publication, according to Publisher Dick Moessner. The final issue of the bi-monthly magazine will be Dec. 15.

“Insurance West has been around 65 years, but it only took National Underwriter one year to grind it to a halt,” Moessner said. “The magazine has been losing money. We had a healthy forecast going into next year, but I guess it was just a business decision.”

The staff, including Editor Dan Aznoff, Executive Editor Ron Gillmeister, and Associate Editor Greg Burkman, are all “looking for a job,” Moessner said.

“They brought me in six months ago with the idea of continuing publication and turning it around,” he continued. “We hired a new art director, we put together a professional media kit for 2001. I guess they just didn’t want to put the money into supporting it.”

InsuranceWeek was founded in 1933 by IW Publications Inc., which was also the publisher of Claims, Covering the Business of Loss, and Kirschner’s Insurance Directories. National Underwriter purchased InsuranceWeek in 1999, and changed the name to Insurance West once it began coming out semi-monthly rather than weekly.