-By Luca Moses, Mediaweek

NEW YORK Against a backdrop of rising costs and declining ad pages across the industry, Hearst Magazines said it would close third-place CosmoGirl with the December issue.
 
The title is the second that Hearst has folded this year; company president Cathie Black, who made the CosmoGirl announcement in an internal e-mail today, earlier this year shuttered Quick & Simple, a weekly women's service title.
 
CosmoGirl publisher Vicki Wellington was reassigned to helm Hearst's new Food Network Magazine, which launches in November, while editor Susan Schulz will stay on at Hearst to work on special projects. Other staffers may be absorbed elsewhere in the company. Subscribers will receive copies sister pub Seventeen, and the Web site, CosmoGirl.com, will continue.
 
While Seventeen speaks in the voice of teens' peers, nine-year-old CosmoGirl was meant to channel an older, more authoritative voice. Its circulation stood at 1.4 million in the first half of '08, down 1.4 percent, per the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
 
CosmoGirl had been in third place of the top three teen books, and of the three has been hardest hit this year. Its ad pages fell 15.5 percent to 527 this year through October, per the Mediaweek Monitor. Seventeen's declined 8.8 percent to 693 while Conde Nast's Teen Vogue were down 5.8 percent to 919.