Lots of coverage by bloggers of Reed Elsevier's decision to divest itself of Reed Business information - my employer.PaidContent speculates about an RBI IPO:
And Davis isn't in any hurry to sell RBI either. "It's early days - we're ruling nothing in and nothing out". That includes an IPO for the unit. "We are very open and flexible on how we do this and also on timing."Journalism.co.uk highlights RBI chief executive Keith Jones' positive take on it:
In an internal memo to staff, Keith Jones, chief executive of RBI UK, said this was 'an exciting new era' for the publisher.
"Reed Business' senior management team are very confident in our company, as are all the RBI UK Board - so it's very much a case of business as usual," he said.
PSFK suggest that this marks a big retreat from advertising and a failure to get magazines online:
The story could suggest two things: an Adsense-fueled digital era has made old fashioned print ads irrelevant and therefore broken the business model for many magazines - and meanwhile those magazines have failed to realize the potential of migrating their business properly to the web.Content Matters highlights the same advertising downturn angle:
on the conference call, Reed CEO Crispin Davis indicated that the Company is looking to protect itself from an expected advertising downfall as we move towards a recession.And Media Wire Daily is clearly unexcited by the "dump magazines, get risk information" idea:
Reed Elsevier is unloading its Business Information unit in what some see as a bail out of dealing with an ad recession. The company is trading up publishing business information titles for ChoicePoint, a risk management information provider. Yawn!And now, I'm going home for a stiff drink...
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