In a rare reversal, management at IDG (publishers of PC World) have kicked the CEO/publisher upstairs and brought back editor Harry McCracken. He had resigned over editorial independence issues when a story, “Ten Things We Hate About Apple,” was killed by the CEO for fear of offending same.
As IDG finally realized, at the end of the day, a magazine is a lot like a person; ultimately, all you’ve got is your reputation.
Tech journalists would generally rather write about cool products and score them for themselves than attack powerful companies. Computer magazines, like automobile magazines, are generally uncritical “enthusiast” publications. Journalists for both love to write stories with leads like “The new ________ is the best _______ yet.”
However, sometimes push comes to shove, and Harry McCracken, editor in chief of PC World, resigned last week after the magazine’s chief exec (or publisher) killed a story about Apple Computer. The story, perhaps not wisely for McCracken’s tenure, was called “Ten Things We Hate About Apple.”
That kind of story is only OK with the publisher (read ‘chief ad salesman’) if all “ten things we hate” are on the order of “1. Apple is so darned innovative that’s it’s hard to keep up with all their insanely great products.”
With more and more readers migrating to the Web, and thus not actually buying magazines, advertising, both print and web, becomes increasingly important. Indeed, the PC World publisher, Colin Crawford, claims 35% of IDG’s income comes from digital sources. So what’s been called the ‘Chinese wall’ between the editorial and advertising sides is becoming increasingly porous. As McCracken seems to have discovered, editorial independence is falling by the wayside, and the ‘new Golden Rule’ is in place: “He who has the gold, makes the rules.”