With all the talk of consumer and entertainment publications becoming strictly internet endeavors, it would seem like a foregone conclusion for tech trades. And for IDG, publisher of InfoWorld, PC World and some 300 other tech pubs, it is. Aside from the earlier news about InfoWorld going from being a weekly magazine to online-only, Pat McGovern, the company’s founder and chairman, in an interview on Mediashift discusses the prospect of starting all new magazine ventures online and polling readers as to whether to form a print version out of it. The first example of that tactic is taking place with ComputerWorld, which was recently launched in the UK for the web-only. Time will tell if the readers want it in a print format too, he said.
On the “Google: Friend or Foe” front, McGovern goes so far as to call it a partner and collaborator (which is different from former IDG CEO Pat Kenealy’s POV a few years ago): “We think Google is good because it points people to where useful IT information is, and as they become a more consistent buyer, they’ll come back to us. We put a lot of our video content on Google Base so they can sell across that, and we get more views that we can sell [ads] on.”
In addition, McGovern also offers thoughts on how bloggers can earn $500,000 a year, why the Industry Standard died, and the benefits of keeping a company private.
Related:
—Updated: IDG’s InfoWorld Magazine To Close Down; Focus on Online/Events
—IDG No Longer A Print Company; Online 35 Percent Of U.S. Publishing Revenues