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Ziff Davis Teeters
Longtime Reader writes: "It is a short article with links all over the place, but Linux and Main is running a story that says Ziff Davis might file for bankruptcy this week. The company plans to stay in business by expanding its focus on computer games, the story says." To get you started, reader idiotnot contributes this link to coverage in the NYT.
Nobody will accept Ziff Davis doing games. At least nobody will be willing to accept that they are impartial. Considering how many of "our own" seem to be bought, Ziff Davis would give the impression that they are pre-bought and just waiting to close the deals.
Personally, though they seem an amazing resource, I only use their website when I encounter software thats not popularly reviewed such as obscure mp3 creation or audio ripping programs, and scanner programs, and web site creation software that I have never heard of. Best they stick to what they do but focus their attention at serving their customer base and not catering to the OEMs. Cultivate a relationship with groups like slashdot, anandtech, HardOCP, etc...
I hope Ziff Davis folds up completely and collapses.
... Nah, I'm dreaming too much.
Their magazines don't offer any straight journalism; they're just pure advertising, page-for-page. All their product reviews and reports read just like the ads that follow on the next page!
Maybe if they fold and these awful rags go away, the CIO-types of the world will actually get some literate, technical information instead of marketing BS!
Goodbye, ZD. And good riddance.
--NBVB
Did they do Computer Shopper too? That was great way back when, before they shrunk it to normal size and all. You could find some damned good deals in there (and I think there were some good articles at times too, but that wasn't what I bought it for...).
I hope they come back to a technical crowd at least. There's too much crap about the business of the internet and computers - I want more technical information available to the masses.
-N
I've nothing to say here...
I clearly remember ZD as one of the pioneers of misleading mail-order campaigns. They sent a renewal notice that was designed to look like an IRS notice. That was over 10 years ago, and I immediately cancelled the remainder of my PC Magazine subscription, and have avoided dealing with them ever since. As they took over other magazines that I subscribed to, I let those subscriptions lapse. That was partially because I disliked ZD's behavior, and partially because the computer magazines were gradually becoming a waste of time anyway.
I try to avoid dealing with companies that use unethical advertising. Latest example that comes to mind is VeriSign.
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Sorting through the NY Times Article here were some interesting tid-bits I picked up.
* Willis Stein & Partners paid $780 million for the company during the bull market.
* The company's earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization are projected to be $6.5 million in 2002
Translation: At the current rate of profit, it will take over a hundred years to make up the initial investment. Ouch.
* (Earnings) are expected to rise to $34.4 million in 2003 if the restructuring goes as planned.
* Savings will be gained from the closing of money-losing magazines and the layoff of 700 of the company's 1,150 employees the last year.
Translation: We plan on making close to six times as much money as we were before, primarily by firing over 70% of our workforce, cutting our costs drastically.
Now, here's what bothers me to some extent, and by no means do you have to agree with me on this issue. But according to those numbers, this company is profitable. Granted, its not profitable enough to justify the high price it was bought back in April of 2000, but its in the positive, and appears to be staying there for awhile. However, it seems that being profitable isn't good enough these days. Not only does a company have to be profitable, but it doesn't appear to have any room to do anything that is 'extra-profitable', that is, things that are not done solely for profit.
For example, the article makes mention that the company in question had discontinued its Yahoo! Internet Life Magazina, which had a distribution of over a million. So clearly, some people liked the product. However, it wasn't discontinued due to declining interest, but rather because the number of ad pages had decreased by 50% over the past 2 years. My translation: "If you aren't in a good demographic, you don't get anything published for you."
That's not to say that ZD is under any obligation to operate at a loss for the benefit of the masses. My issue is that ZD is not operating at a loss, but they still plan on putting 700 people out of work, and discontinuing publications that have readership. If there ever was a place where the mythical 'invisible hand' of the market were giving lots of people the finger to enrich the few, this were it. After all, the only people who have to gain from this restructuring are the share holders, while hundreds of workers go unemployed and millions of readers lose their reading material.
So much for the market automatically doing what's best for everyone, eh?
So if ZDNet is focusing on their gaming coverage, here's my own little wish list:
- For the love of god, hire some more women. How many women are on the gamespot.com staff? I'm looking at today's Gamespotting, and it's all XY chromosomed folks. No wonder games like DOA Vollyball are coming out - there isn't someone to stop that jiggle fest from going out of control. (Not that I don't like good looking girls running round, but if they made it fair and featured guys in speedos, I wouldn't feel like it's being marketed only to 14 year old masturbating teenagers who don't have a like).
- Stop it with the positive previews. I have yet to see a preview of a game that says "You know, we're working with an early build of a game - and it sucks. I mean, you thought Daikatana was bad - this game takes the cake." I don't even read reviews anymore - I just check out the synopsys of a game, download the demo, and that's it, because I know I can't rely on what game journalists say about the game before its released. I know it's hard, especially when a game in beta might be better in final version. But if you only have something nice to say (when it isn't deserved), don't say anything at all.
- Ziff Davis also owns gamers.com, Official US Playstation Magazine, etc, etc, etc. I almost hope they go under, mainly because a good chunk of the paper gaming magazines are owned by one company, and you can tell. They're all pretty much the same (much like there's no reason to go to zdnet.com if you've already scanned the headlines for cnet.net). Anyone remember the Gamefan magazine? Great rag, and I was hoping GameGo would take off, but with a near monopoly on gaming magazines, Ziff-Davis has made sure everything is covered in a macho bullshit shell.
- No booth babe pictures. Ever. Again. Look, maybe it's because I get laid on a regular basis, but I don't feel the need for computer gaming news to feature silicon injected flesh peddlers. I want to know about the game. Is it fun. Is it entertaining. I was annoyed after visiting E3 to see the high level of insults to women depicted there, and even more so after checking out a gaming magazine to see they focused the first section to pictures of the girls. Stop it. Please.
That's my little wish list, and I'm sure I'm forgetting other things.52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
SysAdmin, and Server-Workstation Expert
The latter is free, and really worth a read, but they lie about not selling your name to advertising agencies.
Computer Shopper was great in its day. Waiting for it to come each month so you could see what new equipment was available and at the cheap prices, checking a bunch of the ads for the lowest price, then calling up ready to make an order only to be told you needed to wait a few days to get the new price. The article were just something to skim through before you tossed it for the new month.
However the internet killed it. What value does Computer Shopper have when you can go to places like pricewatcher and do a quick search and get the lowest price. In addition the internet provides quicker access to new equipment.
You're absolutely correct. I remember well the days when OS/2 could have been a contender and how shockingly little was ever written about it in PC Magazine.
Ever since then PC Mag (along with every other ZD publication) has transitioned from serious tech journalism to serious whoring.
These days I read Maximum PC for a similar level of info to what I used to get in PC Mag, but as good as it is it's still a magazine aimed at hobbyists. Hopefully the fall of ZD will give someone else a chance to launch some magazines for the markets ZD currently dominates that contain useful content rather than whoring.
Yeah...Pricewatch is what Computer Shopper used to be, only a hell of a lot more convenient and my postal carrier is a lot less disgruntled now. :) The Hard Edge was the BEST! Alice Hill still works for C|Net I think... I've seen a few commentary articles from her anyway.
My journal has hot
sPh
In the late 80s I actually read PC Magazine. I thought it was a half-decent way to keep abreast of things happening one particular platform -- "IBM PC Compatable" type machines. Of course, if you relied on it, you would end up with a very narrow and distorted view of Personal Computers.
In the early 90s, it seemed to get progressively worse. It kept its focus on only one hardware platform (which is almost, though not quite, justifiable today, but ten years ago, no way), but also focused almost exclusively on a single OS vendor -- you can guess who.
The last straw came in 1995 when they gave their "technical excellence" award for OSes, to Windows 95. Compared to some of the other things around at the time, such as OS/2 Warp, this was a complete joke. You can talk about market realities or whatever, but when it comes to pure technique, Windows 95 is to Warp, as a Model T is to a modern car.
Up to then, I knew I was getting distorted information from them, but just how distorted it was, I guess I just hadn't fully realized it. I took a look around at some other ZD publications then, just to make sure I wasn't jumping to any unjustified conclusions, and then safely concluded: ZD was just Microsoft's PR arm. They were not journalists.
I stopped reading anything published by Ziff-Davis. The words "Ziff-Davis" actually became a negative-value trademark, a badge for unusually poor quality. Worse than random noise. This is a company who can put goodwill on the liabilities side of their balance sheet.
They could even have reformed in the last few years, and I wouldn't know. They established a such horrible reputation and it would take a miracle to bring them back. I can't imagine that anyone reads them anymore.
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I stopped buying PC Rag after their ridiculous "comparison" of OS/2 and Win95. It was only two pages, with 80% covered by a single graphic, correctly stating the differences in how each OS protected its running apps. After showing clearly how OS/2 was superior in crash protection, they chose their winner: "Verdict: Windows95 by a mile." After the barrage of hate mail in the next issue's ed page, they responded that they chose Win95 because they knew it would win the bulk of the market share. Technical merit had nothing to do with it. They went with MS, against the facts they presented, because they knew MS would win anyway. That was the last straw for me. They deserve what they are getting now.
Back in the last century, I used to love reading Interactive Week when I was working for a big networking company that was making tons of money, and so was Z-D. It was full of news, gossip and ads that were useful to my niche. I read and quoted from the online edition in my work several times a week, and my boss agreed to pay for a print subscription for me. But there was no apparent way to order and pay for a print subscription online. They wouln't sell you a subscription, but they would send it free - if only you filled out a lengthy survey of how much budget you controlled in a long list of categories. If you left out one, when you hit "submit," it erased everything, you got an error message and had to start all over again. You really had to want that magazine pretty badly to go through all that. My boss told me to just check off $50,000 for every category. I eventually started getting my magazines, but by then the tech bubble had burst, the magazine was barely thick enough to swat a fly with, and I had moved on to another sector, where my magazines nonetheless continued to follow me. So I don't see how they were making money on subscriptions, although they were probably told advertisers that they had a lot of powerful executives with big budgets reading their mag.
You must be present to win.
I think one of the root causes behind the decline, at least in terms of gaming magazines, is that they can't keep up with the instant-review, demos and walkthru's available on the internet.
If you are a hardcore gamer, you've usually purchased, hacked, and beaten the game weeks before the review appears in a magazine. With the ability to access demos, previews, reviews, and walkthru's with just a few clicks (and usually avoiding having to wade through pages and pages of ads), I just don't see how the print medium can keep up.
Dr. Wu
I read ZD's Stereo Review magazine for thirteen years before I ever heard of personal computers, so its impending bankruptcy seems especially poignant to me - even more so, the end of an era.
However, "poignant" != "too bad, I'll miss them," by any means. Cranks (such as Dvorak and Berst) posing as journalists really soured my opinion of their latter-day efforts.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, write technology blogs.
Yes, and their treatment of WinCE/PocketPC versus Palm has been similar. Back when WinCE handhelds were new, PC Mag touted their "familiar" Windows-like interface as this great advantage, despite being double the price and half the productivity power of a Palm. They simply bet with the projected winner instead of publishing an objective and truthful comparison. Feh!
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
Speaking of ZD and gaming, I used to have this favorite gaming publication called "Gamefan". Two favorite gaming mags, actually; NextGen for in-depth coverage of the industry and Gamefan for the big picture. Life was good until ZD started doing something that would annoy most of us... Stopped paying the Gamefan Editors... They weren't fired or layed off. ZD just wasn't coming through with the money. About half the staff quit and formed Gamers Republic, which was short lived. The remaining staff was forced to shut down the site and the great mag eventially disappeared into oblivion. Given this and other incidents, you can see why I am oh so hopeful that ZD succeeds in their new gaming venture. Or not.
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PC magazine is a classic example of what was wrong with the content of ZD magazines. All it did was cheerlead for Microsoft, Intel, and manufaturers of garbage hardware. They also tried to play three card monte with advertisers by claiming the people they sent free magazines to as real subscribers. Advertisers eventually figured out that their ads were getting thrown straght into trash cans by people who didn't read mags they didn't subscribe to. The best example of this was Yahoo Internet Life. I doubt that any advertisers will stick with them once they file. Adios, ZD.
How ya like dat?
I completely agree with you. I own both paying subscription to GS and IGN and the booth babes pics were just an embarrassment. It's bad nuff E3 even had them in the first place, but to pander the pictures on the front page for the rest of the horny male teens, well...but, wait, it's about the games right? Sure..it's about the games. And articles in PlayBoy are good too.
I've been playing games for 15 years now, and I have to say, the industry has become a lot more sexified (is that a word?). Before it was just a lot of side scrollers and a boy or a girl could be good at that finger-twitching. Now it's just "take your Sims and go to the corner, m'kay?" while the guys drool over polygonal boobs bouncing on the screen.
Oh but there're the excuses. Let's see,
"the industry is geared toward men"
"more men can afford to get games so they buy more"
"more men are programmers so they program what they want"
"women don't like games!"
"women don't understand games"
"women think it's a waste of time (maybe pouring $$ down an industry that consistently abases women is a waste)"
It's funny how some guys can recite them with religious fervor and believe in them like a zealot. That's the only way to believe the industry is right as it is now.