Douglas buys Briefings Group

Douglas Publications, owner of B2B magazines such as American Painting Contractor, has purchased the Briefings Publishing Group from Wicks Business Information.
Given that Briefings has its office in Alexandria, Va., and that Douglas's headquarters are in Richmond, Va., there's likely to be some worry about job loss at the Briefings Group.
But Douglas says it intends to keep the Alexandria office.
Smart folks at the Briefings Group may want to try and transfer to a new job at Wicks's headquarters in Fairfield. That little Connecticut village on the Atlantic coastline has two colleges, a cute downtown and one of my favorite coffeeshops in the Northeast.

Feeling OK?

A new study confirms what most of us have known for a long time. Practicing journalism is bad for your health. The Chinese Physician's Association studied 1,182 reporters in Beijing and found that only 28 of them were healthy. The most common ailment was chronic exhaustion, which was reported by 84.2% of the research subjects.
Now things may be worse in China, but there's no denying that bad health is common among journalists around the world. Take a look around your newsroom, and note how many folks are obese, reek of cigarettes or appear to suffer from a stress-related mental health issue.
The problem may be that a reckless disregard for health is part of the journalist persona. Nowadays I practice yoga. I don't drink or smoke. But I first fell in love with this industry when I saw the borderline depravity of the Boston Globe's newsroom in the early 1970s. I was just a kid, but there was something about the chain-smoking, wise-cracking men, bent over their typewriters, complaining about hangovers and local politicians, that I found compelling.

Exec resurfaces

Dan Ramella, who was pushed out of his job as president of Penton Media in a corporate restructuring last summer, has launched a new company and a new trade magazine. Harbor Communications will publish Club & Resort Business, a monthly B2b title for golf club management. Ramella's new company is based in the Cleveland area, just like Penton. So expect a lot of raiding of quality Penton employees.

Ethics hotline

I've heard it argued...and argued effectively...that journalists in the specialized press face more ethical pressure than do mainstream journalists. Many B2B publications are dependent on a small group of advertisers, and some B2B publishers have difficulty separating editorial and advertising functions.
When you find yourself in the middle of an ethical debate -- and any good journalist will at least once in his career -- there's a new place to turn for help.
The Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists is run by two media organizations and The Center for Ethics and Social Justice at Loyola University Chicago. Given that I'm a journalist, and a Jesuit-educated one at that, it's no wonder that I'm thrilled by this idea.

Ex -Primedia exec

There goes another one. Tom Fogarty, vice president of production for Primedia Business, is joining Ascend Media, the Kansas-based company founded by ex-Primedia executives.
It's become an increasingly familiar story in the B2B world. As Primedia, where I was once vice president for online content, deteriorated, it fired staff and sold off properties to pay down its enormous debt load. Companies like Ascend and M10 -- founded by exiled Primedia folks took advantage by buying up their old magazines and raiding Primedia for talent.
It's a story that will brighten the day of anyone who has ever been laid off.

Another rename

Advanstar's Video Store Magazine is changing its name to Home Media Retailing. The new title is designed to reflect changes in the industry it covers -- a business where DVD rental companies like Netflix and the video-on-demand services offered by cable providers are displacing the local video store.
Is a similar name change expected for Reed's Video Business?
Video Store Magazine is also changing the name of its web site. Thank god. The publication may have had the worst domain name in the B2B world -- Hive4media.com.