CMP whacks Network Computing, Optimize
It’s an incredible coincidence. The same day that BZ Media put out a press release about the record-setting June 1 issue of SD Times, CMP Media put out a press release about its continuing shift to an online media company. That involves laying off 200 people, and shuttering three publications. Network Computing and Optimize. Both of them will be folded into InformationWeek, CMP’s newsweekly. SysAdmin is being closed outright.
To quote from the release:
“We found last year for the first time, our non-print revenues outstripped our print revenues,” CEO Steve Weitzner said. “This year that trend is continuing and the gap is actually growing. We want to realign internal resources around these growth areas and look at opportunities in the marketplace and really go after them.”
Consequently, Weitzner said, the company is putting its online businesses “at the center of everything we do and changing how we do print.”
SysAdmin and Network Computing will be missed. (Frankly, I don’t think that Optimize will be: I never quite understood who that magazine was for, and what value it provided.) The inclusion of Network Computing into InformationWeek seems like a terrible mistake – I’m not sure what value it offers either magazine’s subscribers or advertisers.
My own relationship with Network Computing goes back about a decade. That’s before CMP (which published Network Computing) merged with Miller Freeman (which published Network Magazine, of which I was the editor-in-chief).
Network Magazine was, in my opinion, the better-written, and more thoughtful publication discussing the emerging trends and high-level issues around LANs and WANs, SANs and NAS. However, Network Computing pounded us into pudding, with its heavy emphasis on labs-based product reviews. Written very pragmatically, talking to LAN and WAN managers about the stuff they needed to buy, Network Computing was unstoppable.
In September 2005, after CMP and Miller Freeman merged, Network Magazine was renamed IT Architect. The publication shut down after its March 2006 issue. CMP did the right thing in trying to differentiate Network Magazine and Network Computing.
The decision to merge Network Computing into InformationWeek makes no sense. Network Computing is/was a magazine for network managers and senior network administrators, who are solving specific technical problems, primarily around network and infrastructure software, as well as wide-area connectivity. InformationWeek is a news-and-analysis weekly written for CIOs and senior IT managers, discussing the “vital issues of the day” and providing guidance for making strategic IT decisions.
It’s not a fit. InformationWeek’s readers aren’t network managers and network admins. Frankly, looks like a naked ploy to keep some of Network Computing’s advertising revenue. CMP will doubtlessly spin a good tale, of course, as to why this IS a good fit. But if it’s such a good fit, why weren’t those advertisers already advertising in InformationWeek before this?