Biz Media Blues

Interesting item in Talking Business News today about some really, really bad ad lineage numbers at the major business magazines.

Business 2.0 took the worst hit, but the real shocker to me was the awful numbers at my alma mater BusinessWeek, which realized a decline of 18.7 percent to $26 million in ads sold last month. The blog concludes that "BusinessWeek editor in chief Stephen Adler, who has been on the job for just more than a year, must be feeling some pressure to turn these numbers around. It’s been a given for quite some time that Fast Company has been struggling, but it’s a surprise to see BusinessWeek perform poorly against Forbes and Fortune."

I should add that these numbers are gleaned by external ad-page counters and are not reported by the magazines, and are usually denounced as horribly imprecise (particularly when they don't look very good).

© 2006 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.

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