ACBJ/Portfolio are the odd couple

Dan Mitchell of The Big Money writes Thursday that the combination of American City Business Journals taking over the Portfolio.com site is odd.

Mitchell writes, “The site will employ five editorial staffers, but the announcement gives no indication, other than aggregation and headline-writing, of what they will do. Josh Moss, Portfolio.com’s managing editor, will be the ‘lead editor.’ But ‘full power,’ including editorial power, will go American City, in the words of the New York Observer‘s John Koblin. That power will be wielded to give Portfolio a ‘stronger focus on industry news’ and ‘to offer information relevant to today’s business professionals,’ said Tim Bradbury, president of American City.

“The company’s announcement continued: ‘The site now will have access to local market intelligence and work collaboratively with ACBJ newsrooms across the country, presenting the most important local insights through a national lens and making it unique among national business media.’

“How that differs substantively from American City’s current hub, bizjournals.com, is not clear.

“Who knows, maybe they’re just keeping the domain name active to prop up its value until the economy improves and it can be sold for a decent price. In the meantime, this amalgamation seems to make little sense, at least from a reader’s perspective.”

Read more here.