Charles on… anything that comes along

• BusinessWeek Blues
  

  Early this morning I heard the news on the radio, and couldn’t believe my ears: At my alma mater Business Week, “ad pages declined 18.8% in the fourth quarter and 12.8% for the year.” Naah. Impossible. Can’t be that bad. Then I got the press release and I saw that it is true.

  I know that everybody in the business has a pet theory why ad pages have been so crummy for the biz magazines. My theory, which I admit is self-serving, is that there hasn’t been nearly enough hard-hitting reporting. Now, anyone who knew me at BW can tell you that I’ve been saying that for quite some time, even when there was a lot of hard-hitting reporting in the magazine.

  Still, I think that readers and advertisers expect more of a “mix” of stories than they have been getting. There are a number of reasons for this, and I deal with them in Wall Street Versus America, and one of them is reflected in those awful numbers — staffing. Reporters who are working to fill the weekly “book” don’t have time for lengthy projects. The magazines are thinner, so there is less space for even routine stories. That, and a reduction in ad pages, results in pressure to reduce the staff still further. It’s a kind of vicious circle.

  When you put this together with…

• Ex-BW staffer blogs on ad drop at BusinessWeek
  

  This is the weirdness of blogging in today’s mainstream pubs. I link to a former colleague, Gary Weiss, who is blogging about disappointing ad numbers at BusinessWeek.

  The second commment to his post, though anonymous, has the ring of someone who works closely with us:

  The hard-hitting reporting you bemoan withered away because of budgetary reasons. Besides the layoffs of the last several years, many of those who left on their own—as you did, Gary—were not replaced. Investigative reporting takes a lot of time and resources, and it’s tough to do when you are budget-challenged.

  and then to this…

• The McGraw-Hill Companies Reports 12.8% Increase in Earnings Per Share for 2005: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance
  

  “The cyclical decline of advertising in a non-election year led to a 1.7% reduction in revenue to $112.2 million at the Broadcasting Group in 2005 and a 5.6% drop to $32.4 million in the fourth quarter compared to the same period last year. An increase in local-time sales enabled the stations to offset part of the decline in political advertising in 2005.

  ..then you get a picture of things being hard for business magazines. BW in particular has looked notably thin over the past few months - finally leading it to give up having a European edition, and moving only to online for European and Asian subscribers.

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Met Office: Europe surface pressure animation is wonderful! At last you get to play weather presenter in your own living room. The animation of the isobars means you can wave your hands like you really really understand!

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