Portfolio.com reborn for small biz owners

Stephanie Clifford of the New York Times writes Monday about how Portfolio.com has been remade under the direction of American City Business Journals after the print magazine attached to the site closed earlier this year.

Clifford writes, “Now, Portfolio.com, which had been sophisticated and sardonic, is being reinvented as helpful and earnest. Mr. Bradbury wants it to be a must-read site for small- and medium-size business owners. Other sites, like Inc.com and Entrepreneur.com, already cater to that audience.

“‘Both of them are offering more news you can use and have a lot of resource potential,’ J. Jennings Moss, Portfolio.com’s editor, said of Inc.com and Entrepreneur.com. ‘We’ve got a lot of resources as well — how to build a business, tips — but our focus is about finding different stories that matter in the news.’

“If Portfolio once delivered gossip about which power brokers were feuding, it now will cover topics like commercial real estate, economic development, health care, and where the stimulus money is going. The goal is to serve ‘local decision makers,’ Mr. Bradbury said. ‘Our tone is going to be more similar to what we have in our business journals,’ he said.

“Starting this week, the site will add new features, like a tool called BizWatch that lets readers click an icon to get updates on companies and executives from selected news sources. Mr. Moss is starting a series on risk, and local business journal coverage will be highlighted and compiled for trend pieces, like the status of solar energy in the various states. ‘For some of the best pieces, it is a national outlet for them, which they don’t have now,’ Mr. Bradbury said.”

Read more here.