Ziff is shutting down The Net Economy today, after forming a relationship with Advanstar Communications. The assets of Net Economy will be combined with the Advanstar publication America's Network. Advanstar has 92 business publications, and 79 tradeshows.

Apparently tradeshows are part of the reason for the deal; Ziff doesn't have any events to speak of. But events (at least tech events) aren't doing terribly well these days either…

Net Economy was a relatively new pub, targeted at the xSP segment –businesses that provided Internet-based and telephony-based services. It was a great magazine. Unfortunately, the market it served cratered shortly after the book launched.

Ed Cone reflects on the contrast between the high times (all of 2 years ago) and the low ones (which I guess would be now).

The note Ziff CEO Bob Callahan sent out about the deal was as upbeat as messages like this can be, talking about the benefits of the deal to Ziff. He also took time to hammer an unnamed competitor for spreading lies about the future of other Ziff pubs.

I've been through this cycle before; the ads are hard to come by, so salesmen will say anything they think anyone will believe (and some things they just hope they'll believe). There's always a grain of truth in the best lies.

The question is, at what point do the salesmen who run publishing companies start talking to editors like they're customers?

This happened at my last company. A magazine I was running was a new launch, and I was reassured over and over by my boss (a salesman, I should add) that the pub was going to be given time to take off, that it was strategic to the future direction of the company, yadda yadda yadda. I knew the magazine's original model was flawed (though it was tough to sell that up the chain, because the company president's significant other did the market research behind it), and I was close to fixing it I was the last person to find out the magazine was being shut down.
The problem these days for word jockeys like me is that even if you think you're getting more sales pitch than truth from above, there's not a whole lot you can do about it. I'm inclined to give my bosses the benefit of the doubt, but even if I didn't , my options would be limited–I certainly don't see me monetizing my blog anytime soon.

But I'm told Baseline is doing well, so I try not to worry too much about the background noise of debt restructuring and closing publications. Happy Happy, Joy Joy.