It looks like this was an active day over at the offices of Budget Travel. Rumors started flying late Friday evening when New York Magazine’s Daily Intel column reported that Budget Travel was being shuttered by its owners, The Washington Post Company, due to a 33% year over year quarterly drop in revenue (which, given the state of the publishing world over the past year, doesn’t seem too bad).

With an announcement rumored to come on Monday, the rumor mill was swirling all weekend about the news (check out what happens when you search Twitter for “Budget Travel Closing”). Curiously enough, on Friday, when editor-in-chief Nina Willdorf was asked to put the rumors to rest (as well as the nerves of the entire staff), she curiously decided to respond to NY Mag with a terse: “Heading out of town. Can’t talk. You can call me Monday.”

Nice job on rumor control. Anyway, come Monday morning, as word began to spread that the budget-conscious mag was about to go the way of Gourmet, Domino, Portfolio, etc . . . a Newsweek rep finally realized that they should probably address the gossip. Contrary to an ad department staffer’s revelation that his department was told to put things on hold for the February issue, Newsweek stated that “It’s business as usual at Budget Travel and we are currently working to produce the February issue and beyond.”

Which is where we stand now. My father used to say, “When there’s smoke there’s fire.” (He may still say this. I’ll have to check with him on that and update you.) We’re working our inside sources all night over here at TheExpeditioner.com’s offices, and we’ll also update you on the latest as it comes in.

P.S.

Hi disgruntled Budget Travel staffer. You can e-mail me here.