This is the second time this month I’ve seen a print publication close down. Intelligent Enterprise a BtoB technology publication owned by CMP made the Febrary issue their last one in print. They announced that they plan to continue online but at last count the site seemed to have less than 8 advertisers.

Yesterday morning MediaSurvey broke the story that InfoWorld Magazine would stop printing effective Monday morning. The story was picked up at ValleyWag and the San Francisco Chronicle. The rumor is that the employees weren’t even in the loop.

Matt McAlister a past employee of the magazine has a real solid post with lots of links etc.

I’m not surprised to see that various print publications are struggling to stay afloat in the Web 2.0 world. But what continues to astonish me is the level of arrogance the big publishing companies exhibit when making these decisions. When Intelligent Enterprise switched to the web they supported the move by not keeping Dave Stoddard on the team. He is one of the most respected and liked editors in that publications community. How do they hope to move forward without the leadership that got them to the dance?

Lets look at the move Infoworld is making, how do you change your business model, switch mediums on your advertisers and do it all without being at least a little transparent? Don’t any of these executives read the web? You can’t just declare your an Internet publication without having a culture, a team and a knowledgable client base to support it.

I filed this one under Worst Practices because it’s not how you jump the chasm to Web 2.0.

I had several versions of the title for this post rolling around in my head. Several contained not so nice words to describe how flat out stupid Viacom is. If you haven’t heard the news, after working on a deal with YouTube to license content that fell apart. They then demanded that over 100,000 pieces of video be removed from the online service many of which had been viewed over 100,000 times by the YouTube audience. (by the way some of the content wasn’t even Viacom content) I understand that Viacom has the right to do this under copyright laws. I am a publisher too and I have from time to time protected my intellectual property rights.

But…..
Suing YouTube for a billion dollars is just plain short sighted and as I mentioned above STUPID. The amount of viewership, exposure and PR they received from this outlet far out weights any revenue loss that occurred. This action could cause a landslide of suits against YouTube and could in the end cripple the service but in doing so it will negatively affect Viacom and the shows it produces.

The executives at Viacom should take a little bit of the revenue they are so focused on protecting and head on down to the local store and buy themselves a clue or better yet a copy of The Cluetrain Manifesto.

Idiots!