Ziff Davis Media, the Web 1.0-era magazine publisher that should have died years ago, has finally declared bankruptcy. It owes creditors $225 million. They are trading that in for 89 percent of the company and an IOU for $57.5 million. Here’s pretty much all you need to know, from the AP:
The bursting of the Internet bubble hurt publishers like Ziff Davis, which said its print advertising revenue dropped to $40 million last year from $215 million in 2001. Its total revenue fell to $76 million last year from about $300 million in 2001.
The company, which is a remnant of the original Ziff Davis media empire that was bought and sold three times over during the past two decades (to Forstmann Little & Co., Softbank, and current owner private-equity firm Willis & Stein), currently publishes PC Magazine and a couple gaming titles. It also runs 16 Websites, the best of which is 1Up . During the 1990s, it launched a bunch of Internet-related print magazines which no longer exist. Over the past few years, it’s been trying to transition to the Web. (Note that it no longer owns ZDNet, which Cnet bought a long time ago). Although it plans to emerge from bankruptcy intact, for now we are placing Ziff Davis in the deadpool.
Saw this on digg.
It’s sad to see it go.
But Ziff was half way between the new media and the old media.
As far as I know, Ziff will continue operations as normal.
Fold everything under news.com – niche sites are too abundant and easily duplicated if you ask me.
ZDnet was terrible! PC Magazine was perpetually dumbed down with tons of advertisements and their idea of a motherboard review was 2 paragraphs parroting info contained in press releases. I hope CNet is next to go down!
theres a blog entry on techcrunch pg 2 that triggers phishing filters
its really annoying
I would agree with Jimmy D, that much of the content produced from ZD was very weak – their strategy always seemed to be to produce as much as possible with the hope that saturation of markets would lead to customers. That being said, of late their blogs seem to have picked things up… good insights and reportage.
No blog network needs 225 million in financing however. Corporately, ZD should have spun off the blog network into its own entity and traded ownership in the subsidiary against their debts. Or something.
1up’s new review grading system is a huge improvement, and 1up Yours and the 1up Show are fantastic podcasts…here’s hoping they survive.
It’s actually a common misconception that ZDNet is part of Ziff Davis Media – it isn’t. It used to be, but was sold off in a previous restructuring of debt. (ZDNet is now owned by CNET). Also, Ziff Davis Media and Ziff Davis Enterprise are two different companies now…another thing that not many people realize.
I am not so sure that Ziff Davis is going to stay in the deadpool…its debt was crippling, but if it can emerge from Chapter 11, it might be able to make some headway.
1up seems to be the only thing they have going for them, which is kinda of sad, because its not exactly growing by leaps and bounds
Yeah, I’m sure ZDM will be out of the deadpool. It has too many well-known properties not to be able to do something reasonable with them.
There’s a good explanation of what is actually going on here: http://www.1up....cUserId=1002446
Pretty much sound like this changes nothing.