June 29, 2007 /Fine On Media /BusinessWeek

There is a hole in today’s announcement from Time Inc.’s Business and Finance Network, the unit that houses Time Inc. business titles like Fortune and Money, in that the fate of longtime laggard magazine Business 2.0 continues to twist slowly in the wind.

Today’s news confirmed chatter that had been circulating for days, that the unit’s current president and longtime Time Inc. veteran Christopher Poleway would leave his post. His replacement is Vivek Shah, the well-regarded President of the Business and Finance Network’s digital arm. (A clue pertaining to today’s move came yesterday morning with a mass email that mistakenly circulated an updated press bio for Shah—and which was recalled one minute later. [UPDATE: actually, an old press bio.])

Meanwhile, speculation on the potential shutdown of Business 2.0 remains rampant, and has been written up in the previously linked New York Post piece as well as on the blog The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs in the past week alone. I spent a few days late last month chasing a tip that a 2.0 shutdown was imminent.

A reasonable guess remains that Business 2.0 will eventually cease to exist as a print publication and become a Web-only destination, with staffing scaled back accordingly. But no announcement appears to be pending and, indeed, it may be weeks or even months before one is made. A Business 2.0 transition to Web-only status has some high-level support at Time Inc., and there’s ample recent precedent for such a move. These days, magazines aren’t shut down per se—they just go all-digital. (Not that the Web is forever. In 2006 Time Inc. made Teen People a web-only publication. In April, the company shut down its Web site as well.)

Through the July issue, according to Media Industry Newsletter, ad pages at Business 2.0 were off 37.2%, with a 55.7% loss in its most recent issue alone. Ad page losses at business titles are legion in 2007—including at BusinessWeek, which competes directly with Fortune and the Time Warner Web site cnnmoney.com—but the fall-off at Business 2.0 is by far the worst in the category, and it comes atop a ad page loss in 2006 as well.

Questions are also swirling regarding the wisdom of the current strategy that underpins the Business Financial Network. The magazines are now sold primarily as a, well, network, and the titles lack dedicated publishers. The magazine brands are also subsumed online under the cnnmoney.com Web site, which is a source of some irritation for staffers at the print products.

That said, Time Inc.’s top brass frequently points to cnnmoney.com as one of its digital success stories, and Shah made his bones there. So wholesale change there may be a long shot, even though some expect key magazine brands—like Fortune—to become much more prominent online. (Under its new top editor Andy Serwer, Fortune has been on a hiring binge, snapping up the New York Times’ Richard Siklos and BusinessWeek’s Jessi Hempel.)

The fate of the current sales-side strategy is harder to handicap.

A Time Inc. spokeswoman declined to make Shah available for a phone interview today.

01:14 PM

BW Podcast Series

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Second Acts June 23, 2007, 5:20PM

Your Brilliant Second Career

Your work experience makes you a valuable commodity. Figure out how you want to parlay it into a new career for yourself

by Liz Ryan ……

右栏的内容： ……

梁宁

传说软件业有句谚语“微软之下，寸草不生”。
所以乍看来，在中国搞互联网更不幸。因为这个定律，不但可以套用成“百度之下，寸草不生”，还可以套用成“QQ之下寸草不生”。

2007年Q1，百度的广告营业额超越了新浪，这是个历史性的超越。
新浪的广告客户可穷尽，而百度的广告客户不可穷尽。
百度收录了新浪5000万个页。这5000万页的内容，等于新浪在为百度做积累。因为很少人会去新浪上搜索是否在2001或者02年或者03年或者04年曾有某篇文章。也不会有广告商为新浪过去的这5000万个页上曾相关的内容而投广告。
这些用户、这些广告主，新浪都贡献给了百度。
媒体表述自己的观点，靠的是版面。哪个是头条，哪个是首页文章，哪个是相关阅读…纸媒体所有的版面都存在。而新浪这个最大的网络媒体，他的版式，他的观点，转瞬就不存在了，只剩下一篇篇的文章，存在服务器上，散落在互联网里。
所以新浪的媒体价值和他的版面一样，只活在当下。所积累的，品牌是给了自己，流量和广告价值给了搜索引擎。 ……

老猫学出版

许多人欢迎电子书，希望数字世界尽快到来；也有许多人忧虑纸张书的命运，担心未来如果书被取代了，生命中的一段美好记忆将成为绝响。

纸张书到底会不会消失呢？对这个问题我没有特定偏好，反正该来的躲不掉，不该来的则一点也不需烦恼。我们唯一要做的是未雨绸缪，认真面对。以下把我这几年思考、观察的重点记录下来。

一、加上声光动画游戏音效的电子书，不算书

文字可以传达的精致复杂，跟影音可以传达的事物非常不同，大部分书不仰赖影音特效就有独特的魅力，你在读金庸小说时获得的满足，跟欣赏改编的连续剧可能天差地别。光盘式的电子书曾经流行过一阵子，最后他们退守到幼教软件和电子游戏的市场上。那些原本就不是图书的主流市场。

所以数字化的影音特效也许可以取代电视，但应该取代不了书。 ……

孙作茂

PR (Public Relation),是公共关系的缩写。有些看似入行几年的高人说，女孩子做公关比较好做些，在我看来，这纯属臆想。这个行当，要想获得媒体的尊重，靠的是实力，一开始靠的就是硬碰硬。

媒体是媒体，媒介是媒介，二者完全不同。媒体是吃别人的，媒介是请别人来吃的。媒介公关，做的工作就是在媒体这种大众传播工具上发有利于自己企业、机构的文章、节目，达到宣传自己、推广自己的目的。而媒体的经济来源之一，就是企业、机构。它是寄生在媒介所在机构上的传播工具。 ……

　　新浪科技讯 北京时间6月14日消息，据国外媒体报道，道琼斯旗下《华尔街日报》执行总编鲍伟杰(Marcus Brauchli)近日宣布了编辑团队重组计划，以整合该报印刷版和网络版运营，并统一国际新闻报道范围。新管理团队将于7月到位。

《华尔街日报》上述重组活动适逢道琼斯控股股东班克罗夫特家族正与新闻集团举行会谈。此前新闻集团称，欲以50亿美元收购道琼斯。

按照重组计划，《华尔街日报》印刷版和网络版将合二为一，并向比尔·格鲁斯金(Bill Grueskin)汇报工作。格鲁斯金目前担任网络版执行主编，重组后将出任新闻业务执行副总编，他的工作范围包括《华尔街日报》网络版、亚洲版、欧洲版和美国版。 ……