Business Media Blog

Zombie Publishing as Lightening Strikes Press Gazette

Zombie publishing is alive and well. Press Gazette has raised itself from its grave and now stalks the media world again. Five years ago Quantum Business Media sold PG to messrs Morgan and Freud for a rumoured sub £1m sum, who within a short space of time found that the press would not support the awards in their ownership and the title could not afford the costs of Morgans publishing model.

The company fell into administration and the closure of PG was inevitable - until Wilmington, pressed by the enthusiasm of a former PG exec Tony Loynes, bought the title for a rumoured £100,000. Before long, Tony Loynes had gone, the title had gone weekly and staff cut to the bone. Wilmington could take it no longer and a nano second after trousering the profits from this years Press Awards announced the closure of the title. Then along comes the Frankenstein of publishing, Mike Danson. He is making a specialism of buying titles that others have struggled with and breathing some life into them. It is not clear how the Press Awards will work. Wilmington appear to be keeping some involvement. Danson may succeed where others have failed if he focusses on the digital delivery of a solution. Although the PG website is attracting reasonable traffic it has hitherto been a very Web 1.0 offering.

The magazine is a cueship. To turn the Zombie into a living breathing thing requires a complete focus on building a digital solution. Danson should not plan on making any meaningful profit from his dead tree.

Labels: Press gazette, Publishing, Wilmington

EMAP Informs that All Mags are A4

Emap Inform are feeling the pinch. All their mags are going A4 and are to be printed back to back to gain production efficiencies. Some titles will have to change their publication dates to fit.

Erm. And that's it apparently. Just cost savings. No new thinking - at least none thats been annoucned. If the revenue falls some more what next? A5?

The problem that the debt leveraged comnpanies have is that they are having to do everything to save cash regardless of the publishing thinking. You can't blame them for that but if the new model is this:

Less editorial written by fewer journalists, published in magazines that all look the same regardless of what readers want or admire, with fewer pages on crappier paper with no job advertising,

then I fear for the end may come sooner than we feared. There are lots of things that could be done. One commentator rattles on about this here. It may or may not be right, but least its more than just cutting costs.

Labels: EMAP, Journalism, Media, Publishing

Black,Black Black, Black

Paul Conley writes this visceral piece about the future of b2b. I make no apology for quoting from his summary,

"1. The B2B publishing industry -- which is now dominated by giant print companies and smaller Web-only companies -- is about to collapse.2. When the dust settles, B2B journalism will still be here -- but many of the companies that make up the industry will be gone.3. The dominant business models of both the past and present will fail."

The market has already decided this is so for many of the public companies. Centaur Media's share price hit a new all time low of 36p this morning, valuing it at around £50m - a third of its float price. They are not alone - just a bit ahead of the curve.

We have argued on this blog for some radical thinking to solve the problem but there is precious little evidence of anything other than cost cutting. When Steve Austin lost most his body parts in an accident the surgeons did not build the bionic man with an axe. The leaders of B2B companies cannot build a new model industry from the crash damaged cadavre of the old model with a cost axe either.