More on Publishers Weekly

It looks like the recent hiring of Sara Nelson to run Publishers Weekly may not have begun as smoothly as Reed Business would have liked. But I suspect the N.Y. Times is making more of these early missteps than is needed.
Far more interesting is Nelson's belief that the difference between trade magazines and consumer magazines is blurring. And Nelson sees opportunity by aiming Publishers Weekly at book professionals and book fans alike. "There is a crossover population that we should be able to add to the mix," she said. That may prove to be a great idea.
There are precedents for this B2B/B2C hybid. Advertising Age has always had a small number of non-professional readers. But the giant in this space would have to be Trains magazine, which exists first and foremost to serve that peculiar breed of industry aficionado -- the rail fan.
Publishers Weekly has no time to waste. New competition has arrived from VNU.

NYU's B2B course

Those of us on the editorial side of publishing sometimes don't have the clearest picture of how things operate on the business side. If you've ever wanted to learn more...or if you hope to land a promotion to management...then consider taking this one-day course at New York University.
NYU's "Business of Business-to-Business Publishing" course promises to explain controlled circulation and advertising sales to the uninitiated.
The course also promises to explain how trade magazines differ from consumer magazines in "substantive ways" including "editorial content." That worries me. Look: There are obvious differences between the two styles of writing. For example, most B2B writers use industry jargon with abandon (a practice I abhor, by the way.) But when I hear claims that the differences are "substantive" -- ("We're not the Wall Street Journal, you know.") -- it's usually part of an argument that trade magazines not be held to the same standards as the mainstream press.
And I will always object to such arguments.

VNU Business gets editorial chief

VNU Business Media has named Sid Holt as editorial director. In the newly created position, Holt will be the chief strategist for 52 of the company's B2B titles. It's hard to say what Holt intends to do. I don't know him. He most recently served as executive vice president and editor in chief of VNU's Adweek, and I'm a fan of that product. He also oversaw the relaunch of Editor & Publisher, which marked a huge improvement.
At the top of my list of suggestions for Sid -- do something about the VNU websites! HollywoodReporter.com seems to crash nearly every time I visit it. Mediaweek seems unfocused, terribly understaffed, and operates on some sort of strange late-in-the-day deadline. Brandweek.com is so very uninteresting compared with Brandchannel, one of the prettiest sites on the Web.

Reed hire

Speaking of Reed Business, the company has hired New York Post publishing editor Sara Nelson as editor in chief of Publishers Weekly, the bible of the book-publishing world. Check out her background as described in this press release. She's worked at the New York Observer and Glamour magazine, done some television work, and is married to the production designer of Saturday Night Live. She has the sort of varied background that I love to see in a top editorial executive.

Name change

Reed Business Information, the largest B2B publisher in the U.S., says it has renamed one of its trade magazines. MSI magazine, which covers the IT industry, will be now called Manufacturing Business Technology. Reed says the name change will "better identify the publication's subject matter."
Perhaps someone at Reed can explain why Manufacturing Business Technology's too-cluttered website was still urging people today to subscribe to MSI.
What I hear from folks at Reed is that the company continues to struggle with technology issues. That's surprising to me, given that Reed owns eLogic, one of my favorite content-management systems.

Blog history, part 2

Speak of the devil...Dan Gillmor, the man who has done more than any other to bring participatory journalism to the attention of the mainstream press, has bid farewell to his job in print media. He's also set up his new blog on grassroots journalism. Yesterday's post refers to the remarkable experiment in citizen journalism being conducted by the Greensboro News & Record. I'll be looking for more of Dan's historical analysis of by-the-people journalism. I'll also be looking to see if he shares my belief that the movement is about to shift away from "broadcast" issues -- politics, sports, celebrities -- and shift toward the "narrowcast" fields dominated by the trade press.