Folio: has a special feature this month on the top magazine deals of 2004, including the sale of Thomson Media, parent of the Bond Buyer and American Banker; a purchase by a group of displaced Primedia Business executives; and the sale of Hart Publications.
Check out the series. There's a lot to be learned there.
There's also something to be learned from seeing the absolute mess of errors that these articles contain. Take a look. Note the run-on words throughout. The very first sentence of the piece about Hart contains such errors as "fundmanaged," "investmentteam" and "variouslyreported."
That's a result of the shovelware that Primedia uses to move magazine copy on to the Web site. Back when I was a vice president at Primedia, I had many an argument with other executives about the absolute uselessness of our in-house software system. I also had a slew of disappointing conversations with editorial staff who didn't think they should have to clean up the copy once it arrived on the Web page.
Here's some advice. Never use shovelware. And always take responsibility for the final product.
Let's hope that Folio's new owners get this problem solved.
