commbasics

One last note about the changes at UBM... there will be more.  I mentioned in the last post that the recent layoffs were due to redundancy more than finances, but one thing I left out was whether there was redundancy in the publications. The question in my head was, “Is EE Times going to go away?” Here's my reasoning.   EDN and EE Times were major competitors for years, now they are in the same family and covering much the same thing.  In fact, some of it seems to be covered in Design News .  EE Times was kept alive when EBN was shuttered and took over much of what EBN covered.  Now EBN is back.  The in depth coverage that EE Times was known for has been put into EE Times Confidential.  So with the reasoning that the layoffs were to eliminate redundancy, wouldn't it make sense to fold the remaining staff into EDN and EBN and just shutter EE Times online? I put the question point blank to UBM CEO Paul Miller. “I actually see this differe...

When you hear of journalistic treasures like Nic Mokhoff, Barbara Jorgenson and Bolaji Ojo going out the door at a media house, you tend to think the worse for the company.  I know I did after hearing about the "spring cleaning" at UBM.  Closer inspection, however, shows the reasoning behind the move. UBM Electronics seems to be in a constant state of change over the past decade because the media world has been evolving rapidly over that time.  The latest obvious change is the elimination of the print version of EE Times , in favor of an all online presence.  The problem is that there have been, essentially two staffs for the online and print operations.  When the latter was shut down, that left a lot of redundancy and unnecessary cost (from an accounting perspective). EE Times and EBN have built a significant infrastructure out of contractors, including Brian Bailey, Max Maxfield and Douglas Alexander, to provide content.  They are prolific...

This year started out with a lot of activity and it hasn't slowed down.  i haven't had much time to look into the changes over at the UBM Electronics group, though most of you already know that Barb Jorgenson at EBN, and Nic Mokhoff, George Leopold and Sylvie Barack were among those let go just before DesignCon in Santa Clara.  But just a few minutes ago I got the EE Life newsletter with Brian Fuller announcing he was changing hats yet again in UBM and moving into the editor-in-chief position at EBN? So what happened to former EiC Bolaji Ojo?  No clue.  Could mean he's going to focus more on the fledgling EE Times University .  In the past couple of times I've talked to him, and from others involved in the effort, I know he's been putting a lot of time into that project.  I'm hoping that's the case. But I'm concerned about the overall product of all three operations, now.  That was a significant shift in resource...