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The blogosphere is aflutter with reports that Time Inc. plans to pull the plug on its tech title, Business 2.0. Reaction ranges from heartfelt expressions of regret, such as this post from Biz 2.0 refugee Om Malik, to socially networked uprisings, like the Facebook campaign to save the publication. Then there’s the pomp and circumstance from ex-Biz 2.0 editor James Daly, who borrows from Keats and Kansas records in waxing lyrical about the magazine's early days. Meditating in the desert in 1997 over whether to take the editor's job, he recalls, "That night, with the Milky Way spread like a celestial highway across the sky, the decision was easy. New galaxies were out there; time to explore."
And boldly go where no inky wretch has gone before! Let's cut straight to the ironies. First, really want to throw tech magazines a lifeline? Stop blogging. Hey, while you're at it, forget that whole Internet publishing thing, what with all the uploads and the downloads and whatever. By now it's clear as starlight that blogs and Internet search are sucking the life force out of print. Once, tech companies advertised in popular tech mags; now they're holding hands with GigaOm and TechCrunch; tomorrow they'll be zapping server ads directly to some CIO's prefrontal cortex. Like lots of publishers, Business 2.0 got caught in the lava flow of the very technology it covers. Catch that great "Fibber McGee and Molly" episode on your Philco? Oops, TV killed the radio star ... soon to be avenged by Joost. That's why smart bloggers know they've got a great big target painted on their backs, too, as the Web trashes one business X.0 model after another. Au suivant. As therapeutic as it might be to pin the blame for Business 2.0's problems on Time, the Snidely Whiplash of big media, it's also worth noting the victim's own role in the affair. To wit, just to name one mistake, the wacky idea implemented by Business 2.0 editor Josh Quittner last year to pay the mag's own blogporters according to how much traffic they generated. And let's face it, for all the ululating over Business 2.0's fate, it's always been roughly as good (and bad) as all the tech pubs born during the tech boom, which is to say not quite good enough. During its heyday, the magazine whiffed on the biggest story in tech — namely, that tech wasn't as big a story as everyone thought. They have plenty of company there, of course, including this publication. Frankly, with all sympathies to fellow hacks who might soon be out of a job, Business 2.0's struggles illuminate far better than any of its articles how new technologies, and the businesses that emanate from them, steadily devour the old. What happens then? The market chooses, sometimes wisely, often not. Daly alludes to this process himself, remarking ruefully, if ingenuously for the founding editor of a magazine about commerce, that the end of Business 2.0 amounts to "just business." Stop the presses. —Alain Sherter See July 17 story from Forbes.com See post from GigaOm See post from FoundREAD See October 2006 column in The Deal Tags: Time Inc., Business 2.0, publishing
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From: Alain,
Jim--I'm with you on the Clash (No one was cooler than Joe Strummer). Keep on beaming from that mountaintop. Alain
Posted on:
August 1, 2007 10:59 AM
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Heehee.....Nice post, although I blanched when I read that my words evoked (to you, at least) the band Kansas. Actually, I never liked them. The Clash were more to my liking.
Carry on my wayward son,
Jim