McGraw-Hill making big mistake by trying to sell BusinessWeek

Diane Mermigas writes on Bnet.com why she thinks that McGraw-Hill should hold onto BusinessWeek magazine instead of trying to sell it.

Mermigas writes, “It’s trying to sell BusinessWeek as a cohesive branded entity that should command a premium price based on posterity, when in fact its content is the real prize. But selectively packaging and selling the magazine’s individual features and byline writers could collectively yield a bigger payday from Web aggregators — such as AOL’s MediaWorks — seeking to bolster their ranks of paid contributors.

“Such an approach could establish a template for transforming other legacy print-media publications into prosperous digital content factories. Fortune and Forbes are among other struggling business magazines in a similar death spiral.

“There are reasons why this makes sense:

• Various online news sites grabbed some of the editorial in the aftermath of Conde Nast’s decision to discontinue Portfolio. That fierce competition among segmented sites means you can never have too many differentiated writers.
• Content suitors could pressure McGraw-Hill to include data-sharing arrangements with its Standard & Poor’s ratings agency and other data-gathering units that provide content to BW, opening up new sources of revenue.”

Read more reasons here.