Penton bankruptcy means little

By now, you've probably heard that Penton Business Media, parent of Electronic Design, has filed bankruptcy. You may be wondering what this means.

Nothing.

The publication titles Penton has will continue to operate.  No one will be laid off.  That's the good news.  It's also the bad news.

Penton has done very little to enter the 21st Century of communications.  It's still reliant on the old horses of advertising, direct mail and events.  I'm glad that good journalists like Dave Maliniak still have jobs but without a new infrastructure, Penton will not be able to compete in the global marketplace.

Comments

  1. David MaliniakFebruary 19, 2010 at 5:02 AM

    Thanks for the props, Lou. I would, however, dispute the notion that we've been idle in terms of infrastructure and technology. We have recently launched a new, improved website (with totally new underlying content-management platform) that we continue to upgrade and optimize. We're well into online video, webcasts, podcasts, and any other type of -cast you can think of. We're Twittering, Facebooking, etc. More stuff is percolating all the time. I believe that we're heading in the right direction(s).

    ReplyDelete
  2. Lou CoveyFebruary 19, 2010 at 5:50 AM

    Dave, you're right. And I've been remiss in not mentioning the redesign. It is much more navigable and probably the cleanest B2B press entry page in the biz. Your design team did a great job.

    ReplyDelete

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