Never say never: Condé Nast, which is closing down its Portfolio business magazine, has decided not to turn off the lights at Portfolio.com. Instead, it is shifting control of the Web site–essentially, the Portfolio.com address and a couple years of archived content–over to American City Business Journals, its corporate cousin in the Advance Publications family.
The New York Times has already tried charging people to read part of its Web site. Now, like everyone else in the publishing business, it’s trying to figure out how to charge for online access again. The Times is reportedly mulling two options: A Financial Times-style “metered” approach and a Salon/NPR/PBS version whereby everyone gets free access to the site, but subscribers/donors get bonus goodies.
Some Web optimists dream of a day when citizen journalists armed with cellphones, blogs and Twitter accounts will step in for Big Media. But who’s going to spend many months and lot of money tracking down a single story about a doped-up baseball player–let alone stuff that really matters?
Another day, another few dozen firings at Time Inc. The Time Warner publishing unit let more than 30 people go from its Essence and Entertainment Weekly titles yesterday. That brings the total body count to about 250, which means that CEO Ann Moore still has a long way to go before she gets to her rough target of 600 job cuts this year.
Time Warner’s Time Inc. won’t be the only magazine publisher making cuts this fall: Condé Nast is trimming its sails, too. The privately held publisher is reportedly telling every one of its titles to cut five percent from both its editorial and business ledgers, a number that MediaMemo hasn’t been able to confirm.
But I can tell you that the staff at Portfolio, Condé’s business magazine, launched with equal parts fanfare and controversy last year, has been summoned to an all-hands meetings that should be starting … now. I’ll pass along more details as I get them.
Here’s a nice summation of the state of newspapers today: A pep talk to a newspaper’s staff now consists of a pledge not to fire said staff. That’s what New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller told his charges yesterday, and even then he couldn’t make the promise ironclad.
Peter Kafka has been covering media and technology since 1997, when he joined the staff of Forbes magazine. Most recently, he has been the managing editor of the tech and media Web site, Silicon Alley Insider. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
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