Penton Media in More Trouble
Over in the US more trouble for the folks at Penton Media. Paul Conley reprints a letter to staff from their CEO which is very long indeed. It takes six lengthy paragraphs to pluck up the courage to tell staff that the business in moving to a four day week for the Summer. When I want to "How to tell people bad news" school (I really did go on a course about this once!) we were told that you should put the news right at the top of the communication. No amount of flannel can hide the horror of bad news whether its diagnosis of a terminal illness, redundancy or anything else.
One quote from this missive sang out to me,
"but remember that one of our Achilles heels is that we are mostly supported by advertising which has collapsed.
Speaking of advertising, it has not only collapsed in print, but as a company, we haven’t shown the growth we should on the web." The problem is that almost every media company can make the same statement, business media, radio, regional papers, most national newspapers, most conusmer magazines.
If I were runnning Penton, I might not worry about saving a few quid on the salary bill, but perhaps use a day a week over the summer to get everybody working on a better plan for the future.
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Labels: Paul Conley, Penton Media
The Future of Business Media Part 4
In this occasional series we look at what the future of business media might look like. We have begun by thinking about magazines and the implication of the web for the delivery of news.
Now we turn to the second half of the magazine where we still offer the same mix of tired features we always did. In the new world we will be doing this with less staff resources and less budgets for contributors. Editors are faced with two options. Either stick with the old features plan and produce it on the cheap (probably with a renewed focus on ad get features) or come up with a new model.
The problem with the first option is that it will accelerate the demise of the title - and its likely that the content will be driven by dull ad get features that won't get many ads.
Editors have to plan for writing their magazines with less resource. That means tapping into industry experts for content, not freelance journalists. It means thinking about articles which coach, challenge, analyse and predict, rather than articles which report, collate and sell.
Is any of this possible. With magazines closing all around us, publishing companies in trouble it is liekly that the real truth is that the future of b2b writing is web only. Magazines are irrelevant to that and are probably distraction from solving the web dilemma.
Paul Conley argues here that the future is bright for b2b journalism, its just got nothing to do with print magazines. The challenge, which we come on to next, is how to do that and make money too.
The Future of Business Media Part 1
The Future of Business Media Part 2
The Future Of business Media Part 3
Labels: Future of Business Media, Paul Conley
Gossip from RBI and More Death Notices for B2B Publising
For those interested in the musings, occasional paranoia and insider insights into what its like at RBI right now, this blog, written rather bravely I should have thought, by a UK employee covers all the bases.
One of his posts considers whether Reed missed an opportunity in online advertising. With all their resources why did they need to do a deal with 24/7 in an ad network? Why couldn't RBI have been the inventor of double click. It was forgiveable to miss the search phenomenon as thats not Reeds core business, but the blogger argues, advertsing is.
Keep an eye on this blog if only because its an insider with a brain thinking about what might happen.
He does raise the killer question of course. If a company with the resources and brains of Reed don't think there is any future in b2b publishing, what hope is there for the rest of them.
Paul Conley lists the recent "slew of bad news" coming out of the US business media houses and his analysis is about as gloomy as it gets. The only gloomier outlook is the one we will have in six months time when the economy is in a worse state, business media profits have shrunk further and still no one has worked out what the future might be.
Too many pubilshers are analysing trends and trying to work out where the market is going and then dreaming up some ways of how to follow it. I'll tell you something guys - the future is twhat you determine it to be. In short innovation not replication.
Labels: Paul Conley, RBI
2008 A Bad Year for Business Media?
Paul Conley is regular blogger on matters b2b. He argues that publishers don't yet realise how bad 2008 might be. His analysis offers a stark contrast to the blind optimism of the PPA research published last week.
Hidden in his fears of a downturn is the harsh reality that media companies in this space don't really know what they are doing. They hope that digital plays will turn out alright but they don't know how to make it work (there are a couple of interesting exceptions which I might come to in the future.)
Let's be clear - the future is not about putting magazines online. It never was. Not even in 1996. And yet most business publishers do little else. Business to business advertisers are still sceptical about the power of online marketing. What is the point, they ask, of getting clicks? What should be done with these clicks. Many blue chip consumer companies with a trade arm have a corporate website and a consumer web site, but no trade site. Few know how to buy online media, and not many business media reps know how to sell it.
Labels: online magazines, Paul Conley
