by Simon Dumenco, Columnist, Ad Age, The Media Guy
I’ve got a few questions for American magazine publishers: Are you in or are you out? Do you still believe in the very act, the very business, of publishing? And do you still believe in presenting carefully selected words and pictures–expertly produced information–for a targeted audience?
Ziff Davis, the troubled trade media company which sold off its enterprise division last year, is now close to filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, we have learned. The company has not been able to come to an agreement with its bond holders and stopped paying interest on its debt several months ago (announced in August). Of course, this means the PE firm and owner Willis Stein, which bought Ziff Davis in 1999 for about $780 million, will take a big hit.
This is a section of the All Things Digital Web site featuring posts from around the Web, from other Dow Jones properties and also original pieces we solicit. The section is now explicitly labeled that it comes "from other Web sites."
We are fully aware of the controversies around how linking and aggregating is done on the Web and we, in no way, are attempting to "scrape" original content created by others. Instead, regarding third-party posts, we are trying to point readers of this site to other posts from around the Web that we admire and are trying to do so in the quickest manner possible.
The Internet is full of terrific content that is not ours and we want to help our readers find it by making editorial suggestions--Look, Mom, no algorithm!--of posts we think are worth their time.
That is why we have made even more changes to Voices to ensure we do this in the most transparent and timely way. While we don't expect that everyone will agree with our policies, we have made changes that reflect our intent in pointing to content outside our site.
Because the site is wholly owned by Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, we aim to adhere to the journalistic standards of the best of the mainstream media. But, because it is run autonomously as a small online startup, we aim to exhibit the fresh thinking and nimbleness of the best of the new media. We want to be first, and sassy, but also well sourced and accurate. We will offer lots of opinion and analysis, but plenty of fact as well.