The NYTimes.com tech blog, Bits, is reporting that Business 2.0 will cease publication after the October issue. Rumors of a closure were first reported in July.

Quote:

Time bosses gave the publication a two month-long reprieve during which it weighed offers from Fast Company publisher Mansueto Ventures, and others, to buy the brand and its 623,000-name circulation list. But apparently Time Inc., a unit of Time Warner, did not want to arm another competitor. “

Time Inc. purchased Business 2.0 for $68 million, in July, 2001. It was incredibly over-priced, but a year before, Gruhner+Jahr purchased Fast Company for $360 million (a large percentage of which was later written-off). However, by July 2001, the reality of the dot.com bust had sunk-in for most folks, but not, apparently, Time Inc. Time’s “eCompany Now” (blast-from-the-past, huh? — how sad is this: eCompany Now doesn’t even have an entry on Wikipedia) then was merged with Business 2.0, as Business 2.0 had a more-established brand and circulation (and Wikipedia entry). The problem was and is, they never saw the advertisers return — and two-months after the purchase was 9/11/2001. It was not a smart purchase, however, the folks at Time were making all sorts of not-smart decisions at the time, so this was the least of their bungles.

While I have a long-standing practice of not blogging about the demise of specific magazine titles, I also have a long-standing practice of breaking that long-standing practice when I can point back to four-year-old posts like this in which I wrote:

“MediaPost is reporting that Business 2.0 has a book deal with Penguin based on its annual “dumbest moments in business” feature. I assume there will be plenty of space devoted to the magazine’s parent’s company. And, oh, what about a chapter devoted to Time purchasing Business 2.0?”

I’m sorry to see the talented folks who work at Business 2.0 lose their jobs, but the niche Business 2.0 was serving was never really a niche.

Sidenote: I just “unjoined” the Facebook Group of Business 2.0 readers who didn’t want it to go away. As the magazine had a circulation of 600k+ readers and only 2.3k joined the group (which took all the commitment of a click), perhaps it would have been better for the group not to form and show how little support the magazine had among the important Facebookista audience.

Update: The Times followed up the blog post with an article that says ten members of the magazines editorial staff will be reassigned to help bolster the tech coverage of Fortune. That’s great news for some very talented individuals.

A ‘rock stars die young’ meme is blanketing the web this morning. As the findings of the survey sound astoundingly obvious, I predict they will be proven wrong. Frankly, anyone who has ever watched an episode of VH-1’s Behind the Music could have come up with the same findings.

However, here’s one obvious flaw in the coverage of the research: many of the news organizations covering it, like the BBC’s linked above, have headlines like, “Why rock and roll stars die young” and the crux of the stories is this: rock stars live fast and die young. However, the story reports that the research reveals drug and alcohol problems accounted for one in four deaths: or, with my emphasis: ONLY one in four deaths. (If you watch Behind the Music, you would estimate that four-in-four such deaths are alcohol or drug-related!) In reality (as opposed to Behind the Music conventional wisdom), to determine whether or not “a fast lifestyle” is the reason for rock star deaths, one would have to compare such statistics to the causes of deaths in other groups of non-rock stars who share all other characteristics, especially age. If, for example, a group of non-rock stars the same age die at the same rates from alcohol or drug-related reasons, then it invalidates the “live fast” basis underlying the BBC story’s lede.

More problematic is the lack of any questioning by reporters regarding the foundation of this research. How were the 1,050 U.S. and European “rock stars” selected to be in the research group? The findings of this study could be heavily influenced by how that selection process was carried out. Perhaps there is a legitimate measure of “rock stardom” — (cumulative record sales by month x of an artists’ commercial career?) — but if anywhere along the process, a group of “experts” decided who the pool of “rock stars” are, then the research is suspect. Why? Because the rock star status of some artists often inflates after a premature death. If the basis for inclusion in such a list of “rock stars” is based on criteria other than that which can be quantified at a specific point in an artists’ career — before death — then it could skew the sample in a way that could potentially cause it to have an inflated number of “dead” rock stars.

Related (somewhat): Well, it’s related because it’s about how reporters cover statistics. This article in the NY Times about an explosive increase in the number of children diagnosed with bipolar disorder, very clearly states that the research does not suggest more children have such disorders, rather that more doctors are using that diagnosis. It even carries the headline, “Bipolar Illness Soars as a Diagnosis for the Young.” Pretty clear, huh? Well, the Newser.com blurb that alerted me to the story says this: “Number of Bipolar Kids Skyrockets,” which is in some ways, the opposite of what the New York Times story says.