What next for Hort Week?

I tend to get a lot of emails sent to me from industry insiders and 'interested parties' with bits of gossip or pointing me to news items around the Internet. This week has been no exception but the emails have been a tad heavier than normal. Why? Because it involves Haymarket Publishing and the closure of one of its magazine titles - Media Week.

I follow Haymarket closely because it is the owner of Horticulture Week - a title that is not without its own problem of falling readership.

Media Week is twenty five years old and this week, eighteen staff out of a head count of fifty eight, have lost their jobs after the printed publication was shut with immediate effect - the 17th November edition became its last.

Haymarket's press release makes for interesting reading and one particular paragraph sits up high - 'Revolution will now be distributed as a quarterly supplement with Marketing magazine, and will be backed by a new blogging initiative in 2010.'

Let's make no bones about it, Hort Week will not be immune to the financial turmoil and drop-off in advertising spending. I can't comment on their events or seminars but I am happy to guess that with a loss of nearly 1,000 paying subscribers, advertising revenues will have decreased. Not only that, I cannot see how advertising rates can stay as high when the magazine is not reaching qualified buyers?

It's funny, I did offer to help HW as long ago as 2007. In fact, I was in contact with them through their business side and even run a jobs widget on LJ for a while but I realised that I was up against some old fashioned thinking when I received an email with the following.

This is what it said: "We’re very happy for you to contribute to our forums - and thanks for your posts to date. As you know, posts need to conform to our community rules and guidelines.

"However I’m going to have to turn you down on your offer to blog for Horticulture Week. I’m sure you appreciate that while you are running a site which is in competition with us, it wouldn’t really be appropriate for you to feature as one of our bloggers."

Competitor - Moi! I was flattered to think that me as editor, blogger, cashier, receptionist, advertising agent, photographer and dogsbody would be perceived as competition against an industry behemoth such as Hort Week.

The horticulture and landscaping industry needs a news service like Hort Week, I actually wanted to (and still do to an extent) help them adapt to a world where a brand needs to be permeable and open up - where competitors were once viewed as threats, they should now been regarded as potential clients.

It is this silo mentality that still exists today. HW is still not comfortable with its clients coming into its domain. It cannot get used to not being in control.

Going back to the 'blogging initiatives' which are on track for implementation at Media Week. There is obviously some mileage in this blogging lark if Haymarket consider it a valuable tool with which to reach an audience.

Perhaps it's time to lose the words blog, blogger and blogging altogether?

Read the following extract from Matthew Appelby's Telegraph column (blog?) - it highlights how out of touch HW remain with the real world, their clients and information technology - I just wonder where they would be if they had opened up a little more in 2007?

"But now gardeners are catching up. BBC Watchdog's Rogue Trader is highlighting white van man who has set up as a landscape contractor to (mis)lay your drive or build garden walls (that fall on your kids).

"TV expert Mitch Westwood tells me he is dealing, as an adjudication witness, with five times more court cases than he used to as people set up as landscapers because they need the cash - and botch the sub-base or lay turf on concrete. He and the relevant trade associations say this cheapens the reputation of the industry.

"The same thing has happened to journalism with the advent of blogging and Twitter. Gardening hackery is bad enough without readers having their expectations further lowered by wittering morons on the internet. This leads me to ask, has anyone ever read a piece on gardening that is entertaining or funny and not just relaying information? Laughing in disbelief at the gall of the chancer, as you do at Rogue Traders, does not count."

BTW...I'm genuinely sorry for all who have lost their jobs.