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slides are old stuff
New Economy title before the New Economy
By Jeff Bercovici
At 12 years old, Upside magazine should be immune to much of the New Economy fallout that has plagued other business-and-technology titles over the last few months.
After all, when Upside was founded, the commercial internet didn’t exist, and the New Economy had yet to be dreamed up.
But now, after living large on the dot.com boom of the last few years, Upside has found itself suffering from the same hangover as its much younger rivals.
This week the magazine was in the news with a report that it is in buyout talks with CMP Media, one of the nation’s largest trade publishers.
Such a deal seems to make sense: With its controlled circulation, Upside would fit well with CMP’s roster of trade titles.
And other biz-tech magazines are hooking up with major backers. Gruner + Jahr bought Fast Company last fall, and earlier this year Imagine Media said it would seek a buyer or partner for Business 2.0.
Inside.com, launched on venture capital, says it is now looking for a partner.
Upside CEO David Bunnell declines to comment on the talks, but says sale or no sale, Upside will do what it has to do to ride out the current softness in the ad environment, just as it has done in the past.
"This is the third downturn that we’ve lived through," says Bunnell, who founded PC, PC World and MacWorld magazines before joining Upside Media in 1991.
"This is like the virility test. It happens every once in a while, and then in the next cycle you get bigger."
Bunnell says Upside got the worst of it when the bottom suddenly fell out of advertising in November, when the gush of dot.com advertising abruptly became a trickle.
Since then, he says, ad sales have bounced back somewhat and have been holding steady for the last three issues.
In the meantime, the magazine has scored seven or eight new accounts in recent weeks, including a major commitment from IBM, says Bunnell.
The key for lasting out the dry spell, he says, is Upside’s small size and streamlined business structure.
"We’re a very lean and mean company. We’ve never had deep pockets or a big corporate parent."
As a result, he says, the company hasn’t yet had to take drastic measures of the kinds some of its competitors have been forced to adopt, such as double-digit layoffs and shuttering of ancillary publications.
Upside has had two rounds of layoffs, each comprising around five people. The company also consolidated its two online properties into one and cut back on its marketing expenses—what Bunnell calls "cash-management measures."
"It’s tough. We’re fighting for every page we can get." Bunnell says the magazine’s qualified-controlled-circulation model is another advantage during lean times.
"We don’t have the expense of renewing 30 percent of our circ file every year, and we don’t have to put out as many issues on the newsstand."
The magazine had an editorial overhaul last year when Bunnell fired the editor and replaced him with Jerry Borrell. Bunnell describes the editorial product since then as "more proactive" and "more global," citing 11 nominations received this month in the Western Publishing Association’s "Maggie Awards" as evidence of the magazine’s improved quality.
Among Upside Media’s other ventures, Upside FM, the company’s internet radio play, is "starting to get some real traction," says Bunnell. The programming is carried by more than 100 radio stations and conducted in partnership with Media America.
-Jeff Bercovici is a staff writer for Media Life.
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