Another victim killed by advertising cancer
It was one of the most respected business magazines. It was sold because the rapidly decreasing advertising revenue could not cover the cost, loosing $20 Million a year. The “Advertising Cancer” killed another victim.
When will publishers understand that it is not the Internet that killed the publisher but their business model. If publishers kept their original model of “Aggregation and distribution of independent content” the Internet would have been a blessing as publishers now could distribute that well researched independent content FASTER AND LESS EXPENSIVE through the Internet.
But at the time the Internet became popular the publishers already were in stage 3 of the fatal illness. Instead of selling “Independent News” they sold “Advertising”.
News Papers, Magazines and similar independent information distributors will either need to get back to their original model where they focus on quality research and well readable independent news as the service they provide and get paid for or get killed through advertising whether it’s print or even online for that matter.
NEWS is part of the “democratization of knowledge”. But gathering, reviewing, validating, accumulating and individually distributing the omni present information is a service at least I would be more than happy to pay for. Unfortunately I don’t know of any independent operator of such a business.
See my other post earlier this year “What Killed Publishers May Kill Blogger Too“
Or the reason why advertising was great but just doesn’t work any longer “CeaseAdvertising“