Smart Business is closing; they're turning it into a newsletter and website. It's all about capital savings– SB was a big hole into which money was disappearing. With Ziff trying to restructure its debt, and announcing a $10 million loss for the quarter, it's not really a surprise, I guess.

The problem with Smart Business was that it was neither (and that's not meant as a diss). The concept was good– to go after business people who aren't techies by job description, but “stake-holders” in tech projects, in the language of business people. But in practice, it had to compete against more tech-oriented and more biz-oriented books. It ended up being less than the sum of its parts.

The pub had improved a lot over the last few months. But they were cut of the same ad base cloth as Industry Standard et al– and considering Ziff's revenue was half of what it was for the same quarter last year, that wasn't enough.