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By Brian Boyko
Editor, Network Performance Daily
Network Computing, one of the premier publications for network management pros, along with the CIO-focused Optimize, are winding down. Instead, CMP media - the parent companies of both publications - will focus on Information Week and provide special editions of the magazine to serve the audiences that once read Network Computing and Optimize, according to Scott Vaughan, the VP of Marketing for CMP.
"Network Computing was a fast growing product, very profitable in print, but at some point, as people continued to use the technology assessment tools more and more online, we needed to get those tools deeper online and strengthen the magazine we had," Vaughan said.
While Vaughan emphasized that CMP was merely transforming - not killing - the content of Network Computing, print publications across the board are having a hard time right now. The Bancrofts just sold Dow Jones - and with it, the Wall Street Journal - to Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., whose other major newspaper holding, the New York Post, operates at a loss, according to Journalism.org. The conservative opinion journal, The Weekly Standard (also owned by News Corp., incidentally), the liberal opinion journal The Nation, the secular opinion journal The New Republic, and the Christian-focused news magazine World banded together with the Columbia Journalism Review, protesting the rise in the cost of bulk magazine postal rates. The Chandler family sold its stake in Tribune Co., Tony Ridder sold off his stake in Knight-Ridder., and E.W. Scripps Co. is shutting down the Cincinnati Post and Kentucky Post at the end of this year.
Even Weekly World News is shutting down. (Bat-boy was heard to be shrieking in horror.)
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"I have to believe in terms of the feedback that we've received from our readers, and from the marketers, that [other companies making similar moves] is pretty inevitable," Vaughan said. "Not that there won't always be niches for certain products, but… the B2B technology space, is on the leading edge because of the audience it serves. These are very technologically-advanced people who are reading."
At the same time, there's a double-whammy for the news room, as Wall Street demands lower operating costs and higher profits as advertising dollars move, partially, to the Web. Blogs and social-news sites take on the roles once reserved for the local paper - there is even a blog, "Gangrey.com", which advocates techniques to help newspapers survive - even though its motto, "prolonging the slow death of newspapers," is gallows humor. Even the newspaper classified section is dying a slow death as the "mostly free to post" Craigslist takes on that role. (I once cynically, but accurately, remarked to my "old-media" father that the newspaper classified section of his local paper was nothing but minimum wage jobs and scams; targeted towards those that either couldn't afford a computer or didn't know how to operate one.)
"In this area, probably the second time in the last century, there have been two events - one when TV, as a new medium came into light, everything around it changed in the fifties. Movies changed, radio changed, everything that existed changed," Vaughan said. "It's the same thing with the Internet. In a digital world, as more people become digitally connected, every product around it has to adapt and to change… The reason people use a magazine today is different from a few years ago and we've been evolving the magazine. "
This trend is especially important in the high-tech enterprise world because of the strong correlation between those who need to know about information technology and active, travelling professionals. Usually, you can't read your RSS feeds from an airplane.
"There's still a very clear role for print in this world, in fact, demand is still very high for the magazines…" Vaughan said. "There's still a big need for portability. Information Week is 100% management, and it's read by people who want to take those issues on the road."
As for Network Computing - Vaughan says some of the content that appeared in Network Computing would become part of a specialized edition of InformationWeek called "For IT by IT," content that appeared in Optimize will appear in the "For CIOs by CIOs edition," and other content would be moved online as part of CMP Media's "TechWeb" network. They also plan to publish a "Strategic Security" version of InformationWeek.
"There weren't any circulation cuts or anything to that scope," Vaughan said. "Really, this is a key part of CMPs three-year transformation initiative that we have at our company, and it matched what's happening at the marketplace right now."
"If you want to boil it all down, what the magazine is for is really for helping people understand the issues and frame their objectives. What are other companies doing, what should I be paying attention to, what should be on my agenda? It's not so much to go for news anymore. That's all either delivered to their desktop through newsletters, to their mobile device, or online."
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Shameless plug: If you miss getting your network news and analysis in print, the Performance Edge Journal, which I am now editing, may meet your needs. It is free to all qualified IT professionals. Subscribe at Performance-Edge-Journal.com
