“Apocalypse” the sequel
Posted: May 16th, 2008 | Author: Maha Rafi Atal | Filed under: Journalism | Tags: Conde Nast, media models, Washington Post | 1 Comment »In a post last week, I argued that the Washington Post’s new deal with TechCrunch was the sign of the future of media, where big media companies will acquire and aggregate the expertise of niche bloggers while maintaining the credibility of their brand.
Today brings a sequel: Conde Nast, the magazine giant that already owns tech magazine Wired, has acquired the blog arstechnica.com. In case you’re skeptical of how big this is, they paid about as much for arstechnica as they did for the whole Wired business back in 2006.
I know it takes three examples to make a trend, but these two buys back to back seem pretty striking to me. Thoughts?
[…] posts, I’ve blogged about the news media in the digital age. Based on parallel movements at CondeNast and at the Washington Post, I predicted that in the future, major “old” brands will […]