Next week I'll be in suburban Boston to speak to reporters and editors from Reed Business about online journalism. It should be an exciting day. Because as outlined in an article in BtoB Magazine, Reed Business is in the process of revamping itself into a Web-first company.
The move comes less than a year after Tad Smith assumed the helm at Reed, which I said then was "further proof that our jobs are becoming less about print and more about multimedia."
More importantly, the creation of the new Reed Business Interactive unit this summer coincides with a widespread improvement in how Reed's journalists work online.
If you've been following things at Reed in recent months you've seen more multimedia content, more news in front of the firewalls, and a general sense of commitment to the Web -- particularly at the company's Electronics and Media publications.
Take a look at the BtoB article and see how Reed is revamping. But don't make the mistake of assuming that creating a "centralized Internet division" will work for your publishing company just because it seems to be working quite well for Reed.
The BtoB article mentions two other trade publishing giants with separate Web divisions -- Cygnus and PennWell. Cygnus (where I've also done some work) produces some fantastic online properties --notably the award-winning Firehouse.com. But as I've said before in posts such as this and this, no B2B publisher seems to do a worse job on the Web than PennWell.
tags: journalism, b2b, media, trade press, magazines, newsletters, business media
"But as I've said before in posts such as this and this, no B2B publisher seems to do a worse job on the Web than PennWell."
ReplyDeleteOh, I don't know, Paul...I can think of a B2B publishing company in the Washington, DC, suburbs, which seems to be working on 486s!
:-)