commbasics

Don't know if many of you are aware that much of the US media, is not owned by US corporations. CMP Media, is London based (EE Times, Information Week, etc).  Reed Elsevier (EDN, Design News, etc.) is London based.   And this just in... Dow Jones & Co. and News Corp. have agreed in principle on a set of editorial protections for Dow Jones, according to people familiar with the matter. The two sides finalized the last points on the agreement this morning, these people said. The accord paves the way for the sale of the publisher of The Wall Street Journal to Rupert Murdoch's media conglomerate for about $5 billion.

Ed Sperling of Electronic News, discusses the affect the web is having on his business and workload. The Reed Business People, which owns Electronic News, EDN, etc. Has glommed onto the web in a big way. In understand they even pay editors bonuses based on how well their blogs do. Disclaimer: The interview with Ed is in a large, noisy room, so we apologize for the sound quality. We were able to play with the filters and equalizer a bit to enhance it. We're learning what to avoid in all this. Second, TheIinterview is fairly long (over 5 minutes) so it may take a while to download. Just enough time to get a cup of cofffee. Here's the link ...

It began with a phone conversation Monday with a high-level executive of a major media company. "Lou, we can no longer support industry segments that fail to produce a discernible revenue stream." That afternoon, there was a message on my phone from an assistant publisher. "What is happening in journalsim is exactly what you predicted, Lou. It must be hard to be so right." Back in 2001 I started to see a trend in how the free press would survive...or not... in the world of digital media. This blog has some of what I've seen happening, balanced by what the history of media is. Three years ago I started telling people inthe PR, Media, and Industry worlds that if they didn't change their media buying practices (that is, not advertising and relying on press coverage for awareness) that very soon they would not have the media to cover them. This week, CMP, a large media firm did a massive layoff of editorial staff and significantly curtailed coverage of certai...

This year our State of the Media report will go the way of all print…on line…in this blog. Our report has been in the past, only for friends and clients of VitalCom, but the information this year is something we all need to start thinking about. The blog entries will include links to video content beginning with this interview. While it doesn't specifically address the state of the media it does show how an important publication makes decisions for coverage. In this case, its about the small but important industry, Electronic Design Automation. For those members of the industry, the interview and the outcome of the discussion did not end well. But we hope it provides food for thought. link