Over the past two years, several women-centered publications have quietly faded into the background or disappeared altogether. Hometown Communications’ Pink and the Detroit Free Press Twist, which is just a little over two years old, were reduced from stand alone supplements to a page or two.

Twist is still published every week, and while editor Laura Varon Brown said the move on-line would “preserve the best of Twist,” the move seems only to have reduced its size. Each two-page print issue has one or two feature stories and Varon Brown’s column, plus a product placement, a recipe and calendar items. The on-line home page differs only in its Girlfriends photos gallery.

Pink appears maybe once a month and has literally disappeared from the Hometown Web site. Just as well, they’ve turned it into a product shill for trendy shoes, handbags, beauty products and, occasionally, home decor. I worked for Hometown when Phil Power announced the new women’s magazine. He said it would start out with a softer focus, but would grow into a more substantive publication, reporting on issues that affected women. Never happened.

Still, I had Strut, which showed up on newsstands the first of every month. Strut’s eye catching cover was usually developed by a local artist, the content included sharp, well-written pieces from women writers, profiles of interesting women, stuff I actually enjoyed reading. Who knows what kinds of fire sales they were running, but the news/ad ratio looked solid. The format got smaller, which was fine with me, but the quality content remained. Right up until Strut stopped publishing in September. Last month, it became something that required a glittery, style-soaked launch party.

So what does the Detroit Media Partnership have to do with any of this? Strut was a DMP publication. Twist is part of the Gannett-owned Detroit Free Press, which is part of the DMP. And Pink is published by Observer & Eccentric newspapers, which is now owned by Gannett, which is… well, you get the idea.

Pink was most certainly on its way down the tubes before Gannett took over, but in Twist and Strut, the DMP has basically withdrawn support of women-centered print publications that focus attention on something other than soft features, style, health and beauty. Which makes me wonder what their commitment was in the first place.

This is important to women for many reasons. Take the Governor’s recent budget Executive Order. Did you know it made enormous cuts in human services departments, which primarily serve women and children? Agencies are concerned, but the media hasn’t really been. There are questions being raised around the country, because women’s voices and issues that affect women just aren’t well represented in newspapers.

Why I’m concerned is this: As the Detroit Media Partnership seeks more and more ways to cut costs, will reporting by, for and about women end up further under the bus?