Talk:Cygnus Business Media

Editing and conflict of interest

This was a statement added to the main article that really belongs here: "It should be noted that much of the information on this page (including edits) was placed here by Cygnus Business Media employees. In the interests of fairness and balance, any Cygnus employees editing this page or other Cygnus-related pages should identify themselves as such." Editors with business or other conflicts of interests should take a look at conflict of interest guidelines, FAQs and advice before adding edits to the main article. And...I have no connection with this company whatsoever, and the edits I made were to remove some of the more obvious links and corporate speak, along with content sourced to personal blogs that don't meet reliable sources guidelines. Flowanda | Talk 18:39, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

June 2008 COI

I tagged this for a COI. 71.56.32.213 (talk · contribs · logs) has made some edits to the article; they admitted to being part of the company here. JeremyMcCracken (talk) (contribs) 22:16, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

December 2008 COI

There's a new COI reflected in recent edits, by Handllrich (talk · contribs · logs) and RichHandsmGuy (talk · contribs · logs):

1. The block log of the former shows it to be a sock of the latter.
2. This old version of RHG's talk page (as well as old versions of Hall's talk page) show that they also edited as 69.122.210.59 (talk · contribs · logs) (see the "biased editing" section below) and Rassmguy (talk · contribs · logs).
3. Rassmguy is also blocked; a look at their talk page says: The recent posts of the link to my book were made from my laptop--from my daughter, who is 11 years old and didn't know any better. She's proud of her dad and decided to promote the book...
4. The contribs of Rassmguy show that the book added was authored by "Rich Handley" (which seems to coincide with the names that edited here).
5. According to this page, Handley is the managing editor of Advanced Imaging, a publication of Cygnus (stated both in that link and in the list of publications in this article).

JeremyMcCracken (talk) (contribs) 15:07, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Biased Editing

Comment by The Truth Please

Ever since the history section of this article was added, it has been repeatedly revised or is some cases, censored, by a variety of posters. Some have tried to use it to promote the financial interests of company, others to complain about mistreatment of employees by management. Neither is appropriate for this forum.

Anyone who wishes to seriously research this company should study the archives of Folio.com for professionally vetted and edited news reports. What follows is a factual version of the history section. It has been placed here because if it were placed on the article page, it would almost certainly be removed by someone with a conflict of interest (of course, that may happen here as well, in which case the solution might be to delete the history section in its entirety):

History

In 1997, Cygnus (then called PTN Publishing) was acquired for a reported $97 million by a group lead by Gerry Hogan, former CEO of the Home Shopping Network, and Blair Schmidt-Fellner, who, as a vice president with Turner Broadcasting, launched the SportsSouth Network and World Championship Wrestling. Three years later, Hogan and Schmidt-Fellner sold the company to CommerceConnect Media and ABRY Partners for a reported $275 million. Paul Mackler, President of Commerce Connect, was installed as CEO.

Over the next six years, Cygnus acquired several new titles and eliminated older ones while repositioning from traditional print magazine publishing to Internet/multimedia publishing. During this time, the company trimmed editorial budgets and cut labor costs in an effort to boost profits. Holiday bonuses, for example, were replaced by Christmas week layoffs. Partly as a result, employee turnover was high during this period with many veteran staff members leaving the company.

In 2006, a few months after Standard and Poor's warned that levels of financial risk were "very high" at Cygnus, Mackler and Cygnus President Richard Reiff resigned. Carr Davis and Anthony O'Brien replaced Mackler as co-CEOs while ABRY denied reports that Cygnus was up for sale.[1][2][3][4]

Subsequently, Cygnus continued its reorganization by laying off vice presidents Bob Stange and Paul Bowers and several veteran publishers. Five "brand directors" were appointed to replace the terminated publishers.[4]

In September 2007, Cygnus management announced plans to reduce employee salaries by 7.5 percent and cut hours to 37 per week per employee, though deadline pressures remained in place despite the reduced labor and pay scale. According to Folio magazine, "The dramatic cost cutting comes in response to greater-than-expected revenue shortfalls." Folio estimated Cygnus Business Media's net pretax profits for 2006 at about $30 million.[5]

The company's salary cut, as well as terminations of experienced personnel, budget cuts and other measures resulted in an employee backlash on Web blogs, as bloggers expressed dismay and aired grievances.[6]

The controversy grew as the company restored the 7.5 percent salary cut to some salaried employees—but not commissioned salespeople and some editors—and called the salary reinstatement a "bonus."[7]

In 2008 as Cygnus eliminated its Inside Sales department, a move that also proved controversial with some employees. In May of 2008, four of the six full-time staff members for Cygnus' Aircraft Maintenance Technology, including the publishers and editor-in-chief, resigned to start Director of Maintenance magazine, a competing publication. Around the same time, former Cygnus Vice President Paul Bowers launched Airport Improvement, another magazine that competes with Cygnus' aviation titles.[8]

In June of 2008, shortly after co-CEOs Carr Davis and Tony O'Brien told Folio that ABRY was exploring a possible sale of Cygnus, Standard and Poor's revised Cygnus' credit rating outlook from stable to negative primarily because Cygnus reportedly had $157 million in debt due in 2009. The new S&P rating for Cygnus was CCC+. [9],[10]

References

1. S&P Warns of High Risk Levels at Cygnus - 1/16/2006 - Tradeshow Week

(http://www.tradeshowweek.com/article/CA6298762.html)

2. http://www.foliomag.com/viewMedia.asp?prmMID=6178

3. http://www. http://www.foliomag.com/viewMedia.asp?prmMID=6425

4. Latest Reorg Leaves Observers Wondering About Cygnus - B2B @ FolioMag.com

5. http://www.foliomag.com/2007/cygnus-takes-severe-cost-cutting-measures

6. http://www.paulconley.blogspot.com/2007/09/things-get-ugly-at-cygnus.html

7. http://www.foliomag.com/2008/cygnus-mostly-restores-salary-cuts

8. http://www.foliomag.com/2008/cygnus-defector-competitor

9. http://www.foliomag.com/2008/cygnus-exploring-sale

10. http://www.foliomag.com/2008/cygnus-credit-rating-downgraded-poor

The Truth Please (talk) 17:39, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

I applaud you for archiving this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.122.210.59 (talk) 01:33, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Recently this article was subjected to heavy censorship, apparently by someone associated with the company. It contains unreferenced material and reads like promotional copy. It should either be rewritten by a professional journalist or deleted. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Greedy People Suck (talk • contribs) 02:41, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

edits

Sorry about the earlier revert- I was trying to get back to the template format similar to Ziff Davis, which is similar in size to Cygnus and which I based this listing's structure on originally. I have re-added the individual magazine list- just like is done for most magazine publishing companies. Iobannon | Talk 19:39, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

The main difference is that most of the publications listed at Ziff Davis are not redlinked; almost all of the publications here were removed because they were not notable or did not have separate articles. If you are going to continue to add and write individual articles, it would probably be easier to add wikilinks to this article as the articles are created and pass notability guidelines. Flowanda | Talk 08:33, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Wholesale reverts

I recently reverted an edit that removed a great number of edits made over the past few months, including those dealing with mundane WP:MOS and other formatting and consistency issues. It seems such a severe edit doesn't improve the article, but instead forces editors to redo legitimate edits. If there are specific issues or areas needing improving, let's discuss them here first, but I don't think wholesale trashing of a number of other editors' work is the answer. Thanks. Flowanda | Talk 19:18, 8 January 2008 (UTC)