This morning we launched our new blog -- The Careerist -- as part of our redesign of our LawJobs site.  Here's the note Aric Press sent out to his staff:   Folks,We launched a new blog today called The Careerist. http://thecareerist.typepad.com/thecareerist/Vivia Chen is the lead writer with posting assistance from Audree Wong at Law.com in San Francisco. The blog is meant to be an adroit, focused, useful and amusing look at lawyers and their careers. It has a life of its own as the first LawJobs blog, LawJobs being ALM's online job resource. And it will appear daily on the Am Law Daily and go through the ALD process.Please take a look. As you see items that might be worthy,...

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Posted by Bill Pollak at 11:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This afternoon we will be announcing the appointment of Charles Siegel as the new non-executive chair of ALM's Board of Directors.  Charlie's primary assignment will be to work with me and other members of senior management on strategic and long-term planning issues.  In addition, he will act as a liaison between us and our investors.  His involvement with ALM will be a few days per month, and his focus will be on key projects rather than our day-to-day operations. Charlie comes to this assignment having recently retired as the president of the Academic & Professional Publishing Group at Cengage Learning.  He has held senior management positions in the past at Thomson Learning and Primedia.  Charlie will bring to his ALM assignment...

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Posted by Bill Pollak at 10:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There are two trends in the attitude of our people which I'm picking up from recent staff discussions.  One trend I like and the other, not so much.  Both are worth a discussion. The trend I like is a growing positive sense about the business environment we are in and the recent sales numbers we have been posting.  Since roughly mid-March we have been seeing better results in advertising sales, conference registrations, book orders and other measures.  Having reduced our sales forecasts during the first three months of this year due to a slow start in some areas, it is encouraging to see us now raising our forecasts as forward bookings begin to grow.  There's still some caution -- law...

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Posted by Bill Pollak at 8:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For those interested in the future of the news business, there's a terrific piece in the current issue of The Atlantic by James Fallows called "How to Save the News".  He focuses on Google and the ways in which it sees itself "saving" the news industry.  It is perhaps the most optimistic piece of journalism I've seen in awhile on the topic.  And contrary to the mythology that Google is killing off the traditional news business, Fallows argues that Google may be its savior. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/04/how-to-save-the-news/8095/1/...

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Posted by Bill Pollak at 7:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

One of the big topics at the ABM conference this past week was the need to adjust content and presentation to match the media on which it is being presented.  Simply pouring content designed for one medium (e.g. magazines) into another medium (e.g. a website) makes no sense.  Changes need to be made to take advantage of whatever is special about the new medium. We all nod our heads sagely at that bit of wisdom, forgetting that in the early days of the internet, we did exactly the opposite.  We took newspaper content and poured it into our early websites with virtually no change in presentation -- no linking, no additional material, no audio or video.  Same content, different container. ...

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Posted by Bill Pollak at 1:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm in Charleston, SC this week attending American Business Media's Annual Meeting.  Yesterday's luncheon speaker was Andrew Davis, Chief Strategy Officer of Tippingpoint Labs, an incredibly energetic and frenetic speaker with a strong point-of-view about journalism and branding.  It was, perhaps, the most pro-print, pro-journalism speech I've heard in the last few years.  I didn't agree with all of it -- he feels strongly that online subscriber paywalls are a mistake -- but a lot of what he had to say made good sense. Davis's main points are summarized on the eMediaVitals blog posting linked below, and I'll post the presentation (which itself was a lot of fun to watch) as soon as he makes it available.  http://emediavitals.com/blog/17/tippingpoint-labs-paradoxes-digital-publishing Update:  Andrew...

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Posted by Bill Pollak at 1:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)