Posted by
Press Gazette
on 18 February 2010 at 11:21
Tags: B2B Magazines, Magazines, People
Are you a lovelorn estate agent? A single property manager that has yet to meet Mr Rightmove? Or just looking for someone special with whom you can while away the hours discussing the availability of commercial property in Bromsgrove?
Fear not. (more…)
Posted by
Press Gazette
on 20 January 2010 at 08:59
Tags: B2B Magazines, Journalism, Magazines, Media Business, Online
UPDATE 11.10: Emap has also moved Architect’s Journal behind the paywall
Emap’s building industry title, Construction News, is the latest to plan a switch to a subscriber-only web service as its owner continues with its drive to move all its websites to paid-for access. (more…)
Posted by
Dominic Ponsford
on 13 January 2010 at 13:04
Tags: B2B Magazines, Consumer Magazines, Journalism, Magazines
Sad news from Canada, where the country’s second oldest magazine has been forced to change its name because email spam filters have blocked readers.
Being called The Beaver could potentially be a boon in terms of search engine optimisation. But the 90-year-old Winnipeg-based magazine has found the opposite to be the case.
Publisher Deborah Morrison told AFP (via France 24): “The Beaver was an impediment online. Several readers asked us to change the title because their spam filters at home or at work were blocking it. I’ve even had emails bounce back because I had inadvertently typed the term in the heading.
“Nearly a century ago, it probably seemed the perfect name for a magazine about the fur trade and Canada’s northwest frontier. There was only one interpretation for the word then.
“But you’re likely to find a lot of (porn) sites now if you search for the title of our history magazine online.”
After the Feb/March issue The Beaver will be renamed Canada’s History.
The magazine of the London School of Economics, also called The Beaver, has not revealed any plans to change its name.
Posted by
Press Gazette
on 11 January 2010 at 10:27
Tags: B2B Magazines, Magazines, Media Business, Newspapers
Guardian Media Group and private-equity firm Apax have agreed to pump more money in business publisher Emap to aid acquisitions.
The Sunday Times reported yesterday that GMG had “pledged … to support an acquisition drive with fresh funds”.
A source close to GMG told Press Gazette the agreement to back Emap buying other business titles was ‘in principle’ only at this stage and that there were no potential purchases in the pipeline and no money had yet been committed. (more…)
Posted by
Dominic Ponsford
on 7 January 2010 at 09:46
Tags: B2B Magazines, Magazines, Media Business
Anglo-Dutch publisher Reed Elsevier has revealed that it is selling off its US trade magazines business RBI piecemeal.
In 2008, plans to sell off RBI - which in the UK publishes titles such as Farmer’s Weekly, Estates Gazette and New Scientist - were abandoned after the estimated bid price for the business dropped from £1.3bnn to £650m.
The FT and others reports today that John Poulin, chief executive of Reed Business Information in the US, has told employees he expected to announce the sale of various titles to separate buyers in the coming months.
“This unfortunately will result in title closures and job losses across the business,” Poulin wrote in a memo to staff at the end of December.
“I know this will come as a major disappointment but it reflects the impact of the structural changes in our markets, accelerated by the recession.”
The last year has seen restructuring in Reed’s Sutton-based RBI business information and magazines business.
In July, 2009, it sold its travel portfolio - including Travel Weekly magazine - to the entrepreneur behind Holiday Autos Clive Jacobs.
And in November it closed 130 year-old weekly magazine for the construction industry, Contract Journal.
Posted by
Press Gazette
on 5 January 2010 at 13:12
Tags: B2B Magazines, Journalism, Magazines, New Media, Newspapers, Online
Reporters from recently closed US press trade magazine, Editor & Publisher, are looking to keep the title alive by filing articles to the new blogging site E&P In Exile. (more…)
Posted by
Emma Day
on 18 December 2009 at 16:21
Tags: B2B Magazines, Consumer Magazines, Customer publishing, Journalism, Magazines, People
Lord Heseltine has sent an upbeat farewell message to staff today, saying that their recent “trading in many divisons has been better than we forecast”, as he prepares to take a step back from the running of magazine publisher Haymarket. (more…)
Posted by
Press Gazette
on 15 December 2009 at 14:50
Tags: B2B Magazines, Magazines, Media Business, Newspapers
Editor & Publisher, the US press trade magazine which is to cease publication after more than 100 years in print, will produce a January issue. (more…)
Posted by
Press Gazette
on 30 November 2009 at 10:23
Tags: B2B Magazines, Magazines, Media Business
Lachlan Murdoch, the eldest son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, is leading a bid for the US trade magazine publisher of Billboard and The Hollywood Reporter.
Through his investment company Illyria, Murdoch is in a bidding war with Pluribus Capital Management, which is also looking to take control of the bulk of Nielsen Business Media, the FT reported.
The move is one of the more prominent made in the US by Murdoch since he stepped down from executive duties at News Corporation in 2005.
Posted by
Dominic Ponsford
on 25 November 2009 at 07:25
Tags: B2B Magazines, Magazines
Red faces at Ink Publishing whose latest edition of the Easyjet in-flight magazine has been pulped for featuring a fashion shoot set inside the holocaust memorial in Berlin.
The unsanctoned shoot was first revealed by the New Statesman earlier this week in a story which prompted Easyjet to withdraw the mag.
Posted by
Dominic Ponsford
on 24 November 2009 at 07:52
Tags: B2B Magazines, Magazines, Media Business
B2B publishing giant Informa is in talks to mount a takeover of rival German-owned academic publisher Springer Science which could see it paying more than £700m.
Informa, which owns Lloyds List, has net debt of nearly £1bn the FT reports, and would have to launch a second rights issue to fund the purchase. In May it raised £242m through a rights issue.
The FT reports that Informa is in talks to buy 49 per cent of Springer for £361m, but that it could also buy 100 per cent.
Posted by
Dominic Ponsford
on 14 October 2009 at 10:46
Tags: B2B Magazines, Magazines, Media Business
Question: What’s a declining loss-making weeky business media brand with loads of liabilities and hundreds of staff worth in today’s market.
Answer: Not as little as you think.
Business wire and broadcasting giant Bloomberg has just paid between $2m and $5m for the 80-year-old US magazine Business Week, confounding reports that it would go for as little as $1.
It will also have to shoulder severance payments for however many of the title’s 400 staff it plans to cut.
Owner McGraw Hill, like so many other media companies, was desperate to get out of print publishing. But Bloomberg, which has made its money mainly via electronic information, evidently believes there is still plenty of cache to owning such a venerable print journalism brand.
As Press Gazette found in April - in a fragmented media world, we shouldn’t write off established journalism brands.
Business Week reports:
For Bloomberg, buying BusinessWeek will be its first major acquisition ever and a significant departure for a 28-year-old company nurtured on a “build, don’t buy” culture. “The BusinessWeek acquisition will yield huge benefits for users of the Bloomberg terminal, for our television, online and mobile properties,” says Daniel L. Doctoroff, president of Bloomberg LP and a former deputy mayor of New York City appointed by Mayor Bloomberg. “We couldn’t be more excited…We are not buying BusinessWeek to gut it. We are buying it to build it.”
Here’s a video from Business Week looking back at the title’s 80-year history:
Posted by
Dominic Ponsford
on 12 October 2009 at 12:23
Tags: B2B Magazines, Customer publishing, Journalism, Magazines
After pointing out that Tim Arnold is being backed by former NUJ general secretary John Foster in his run to be elected editor of the Journalist - Richard Simcox has dropped me a line to point out that he has some high-profile backers.
Those supporting him include several members of the union’s National Executive Council, past presidents of the NUJ and general secretary of the International Federation of Journalists Aidan White. You can read his list of supporters here.
Those supporting another Journalist editor contender, Mark Watts, include Bill Goodwin, BBC Middle East correspondent Tim Llewellyn and Sunday Times reporter Jonathan Ungoed Thomas. You can see his list of supporters here.
Posted by
Martin Dominguez
on 3 September 2009 at 11:40
Tags: B2B Magazines, Journalism, Magazines, Media Business
Publisher Incisive Media is to be split into UK and US arms, with owner Apax Partners propping up the American Media Lawyer business with $15m, leaving banks to take over the ailing British portion.
Posted by
Oliver Luft
on 18 August 2009 at 10:15
Tags: B2B Magazines, Magazines, Media Business
Business magazine publisher Incisive Media, whose titles including Computing and Accountancy Age, is preparing to execute a debt-for-equity deal led by its management.
According to MediaWeek, Incisive’s management, led by global chief executive Tim Weller, is set to buy an initial 10 per cent stake in the business, which could rise to 24 per cent.
The deal could be completed within the next three weeks, claims the report.
Incisive Media is currently 59 per cent owned by private equity firm Apax Partners, other shareholders include Ingenious Media and Caledonia Investors.
The move after an attempted takeover bid of Incisive by Critical Information Group last week was rejected by Incisive’s lender, the Royal Bank of Scotland.
In December last year, Incisive Media breached the terms of its £174m loan deal with RBS and asked its staff to take unpaid leave over Christmas, leading to takeover rumours.
Posted by
Oliver Luft
on 17 August 2009 at 09:54
Tags: B2B Magazines, Magazines, Media Business, National Newspapers, Newspapers
Financial publisher Capital Ideas has approached Guardian Media Group with an offer to buy the Observer, according to reports.
Capital Ideas, which publishes a number of financial magazines, newsletters and directories including Compliance Monthly and Investing for Growth, wants to buy the world’s oldest Sunday newspaper from GMG for a nominal sum.
It emerged last month earlier this month that GMG was mulling the future of the Observer with considerations including closing the title and changing it to a weekly news magazine.
According to City AM, Capital Ideas wrote to Derek Gannon, chief operating officer of GMG, earlier this month with the proposal.
Turing the paper into a weekly news magazine in the style of The Week, is also one option being considered by Capital. However, it plans to slim down the paper’s current staff considerably if any deal goes ahead.
GMG told City AM it had not yet received the letter. Its spokesman said: “It is not surprising, in the light of recent media coverage, that opportunistic and unsolicited approaches of this nature might be made.”
GMG is currently undergoing a strategic company review, details of whihc are expected to be revealed next month.
Posted by
Dominic Ponsford
on 20 July 2009 at 14:52
Tags: Advertising, Agencies, B2B Magazines, Magazines, Media Business
If you thought the last year was a nightmare commercially for your publishing business - it could have been a lot worse.
New figures from the Central Office of Information reveal that government spending on advertising and marketing grew 43 per cent year-on-year to £540m in the 12 months to the end of March. Happy days then for many publications targeting the public sector.
How long can the spending spree last though? And what are the chances of a Conservative government simply sticking all the public sector ads up online for free?
Posted by
Dominic Ponsford
on 17 July 2009 at 14:14
Tags: B2B Magazines, Journalism, Magazines, New Media, Online
I’m delighted to announce that Oliver Luft is joining Press Gazette on Monday as our new online news supremo.
He replaces Paul McNally - who has sensibly decided to ride out the recession in Monaco, where he has bagged a job working as a journalist on monthly English-language newspaper The Connexion.
Oliver Luft has made a name for himself over the last year working as a journalist for Media Guardian - breaking stories online, and contributing features to the print edition.
Before that he spent two years working as news editor of Journalism.co.uk. He also has plenty of hard news experience after cutting his teeth at the Newsteam press agency in Birmingham.
He’s a talented journalist with superb knowledge of the British journalism industry so I’m delighted to welcome him on board.
Ollie joins Press Gazette at a time when we have big plans to expand the website under new owners Progressive Media Group. I can’t divulge the details of that yet - but it is going to be big!
If you want to send him a story, email oluft@pressgazette.co.uk or call 0207 7534290.
Posted by
Paul McNally
on 19 June 2009 at 09:28
Tags: B2B Magazines, Magazines
The co-chief executive of Emap’s data and insight division, Neil Bradford, has left the publisher to “pursue interests in the private equity industry”.
His responsibilities have been taken on by Emap group chief exec David Gilbertson, who according to the Independent is “reviewing the role and whether to appoint a replacement”.
Posted by
Dominic Ponsford
on 11 June 2009 at 10:13
Tags: B2B Magazines, Magazines, Media Business
The extent to which B2B publishers are feeling the effects of the downturn has been illustrated by a report suggesting Apax has written off its £300m investment in Emap’s B2B magazine division.
According to a report in the Telegraph, private equity firm Apax told investors in March that it has written down the value of its investment in the business to zero.
Apax paid £1.3bn for the B2B division of Emap in a joint venture with Guardian Media Group.
According to Media Guardian, the £300m which has been written off by Apax represents the group’s own money. It also borrowed to finance the deal, so it is effectively saying that if it sold Emap now it would only get roughly half its money back - as it would have to pay off creditors first.
It is only a paper loss - because Apax and GMG will have been planning to hang on to Emap for at least a couple more years yet.
But it is a sign of the extent to which the recession has hit B2B values. And it also a sign that Guardian Media Group may now be regretting the decision to invest so much of the £334.8m in made from selling half its stake in Trader Media Group in 2007 in Emap.
According to GMG chief executive Carolyn McCall, Emap is currently generating operating profits of £100m a year.
Apax declined to comment.
Advertisement
Advertisement
