I was not totally surprised this morning to hear that Ascend Media had sold its Princeton, NJ-based health titles to Intellisphere.  A few things, however, did surprise me about the transaction:

1. This is a case of an e-media company buying traditional media assets.  This sort of bucks the paradigm that we’ve seen over the past…forever.  I can’t think of a situation exactly like this occuring during my years of watching the business.  Can anyone correct me on this?

2. When I got to the office this morning, a voice mail from Ascend CEO Vicki Masseria was waiting for me.  The company, it seems, couldn’t wait to spread the news on this.  I know that Vicki is a very busy person, especially the day after closing a big deal, yet she took time to give me and some of my friends at foliomag.com and btobonline.com a call.  Why?

3. Perhaps because, according to Masseria, Ascend has no further plans for major divestments.  Masseria seemed excited to be moving through this stage of the company.  I’m not totally convinced that this is the case.  First off, I think if some deus ex machina came down and offered VSS (parent to theminsider) and CCMP Capital Partners a nice offer, they would take it.  Second, I still think there’s a chance that Advanstar will snap up all or part of Ascend.  I know, I know: Advanstar is in a seperate fund from Ascend, and so working that little transaction might be complicated, but there is precedent.  Chemical Week, an AI property, was also owned by a seperate VSS fund before AI bought it (AI is also parent to theminsider, and VSS is parent to AI).  (Ps - When I mentioned this little theory to people at VSS, they told me that that was not in the works at all.)

Check out the original news report at minonline.com here.

I hear this all the time…I say it all the time: Magazine publishing is a people business. The products don’t exist in a vacuum, like an iPod (although, considering the durability of my own defunct iPod, I doubt it would exist for long in a vacuum either). You need personalities to develop, market, and sell the products, and you need personalities to consume them. Yet, so often, top level managers forget this. First, I will point you to the example that came to light today: Company lets top talent go; top talent forms rival company; rival company thrives; rival company buys assets from original company less than three years later.

As a young person in a workplace, I hear that “everyone is replaceable” all the time. Clearly, this isn’t always true. Dan Perkins (CEO of AEGIS…click on the above link to catch up) was not replaceable. In fact, I would argue that his leaving the company was a dual tipping point for the dental division’s descent and eventual sale (his departure both began the business’s slide, and the formation of his new company accelerated that slide). If Perkins was not replaceable, then, logically, not everyone is.

Let’s take this one step further. If a mid-level editor leaves a medium-sized magazine. Maybe a lower-level editor steps up and fills that role, and maybe another young person is hired to pick up the slack and assume his/her rightful place at the bottom of the totem pole. Voila! The mid-level editor has been replaced, right? Wrong. Certainly, if all goes well with the internal reorg (and it often does not), and if all goes well hiring a new editor (and it often does not), and if everyone continues to perform at or above the level of the previous incarnation of the staff, then the magazine should continue to function without a hiccup. But, it will be different. Why? Again, this is a people business. The products we produce are the manifestations of our personalities. That mid-level editor’s stamp will no longer be on the pub. And what if–and this has been known to happen–what if the magazine isn’t as good as it was? Well, then that person was not entirely replaceable.

Maybe everyone is replaceable if you want to run some goofy, sub-par business. But if you want to dominate the market, best your competition, and build something–a company, a product, a trajectory toward success–that you can be proud of, then not everyone is replaceable. There are people that you cannot afford to lose–that is, if you want to win.

Cam Bishop is no longer in control of the company he built, Ascend Media.  Life happens, right?  Well, in this case, that’s not the whole story.  Remember, Bishop has a significant equity stake in the company, and what happens in the next 6-24 months with Ascend will have a huge impact on his personal fortunes.

So, what’s he up to right now then?  Though I haven’t been able to get in touch with Cam, I’m told that he’s working very hard right now helping with the transition and with getting numbers in order, etc.  I’ve also been told that he may be hoping to find himself in a new job by June/July.  We’ll be watching.

I come back from a meeting and am delighted to find a comment on my blog. If you haven’t figured it out already, I’m pretty enthusiastic about this B2B media space we operate in and love talking about it with anyone who will listen. But this comment wasn’t a comment at all. It was the in-house announcement heralding the end of the Cam Bishop era and the beginning of the Vicki Masseria era at Ascend Media.

First, I’m not very surprised at this announcement. Things have been unraveling at Ascend since early in the year when new drug launch advertising slowed down and the pipeline didn’t look promising. Then the dental group continued to struggle. By early May, the Stagnito food group, one of the most successful divisions of the company was quietly for sale. And then it was sold. Along with EXPO magazine. And then three pubs were shuttered. And now this: Bishop out, Masseria in.

(Technically, Bishop is staying on as chairman. This company was built by him, Ron Wall, and an often bickering group of finance guys, one side from VSS and the other from CCMP Capital. From what I know, Cam sweats for Ascend. So I don’t question his dedication to the project. But my guess is this move is not a promotion. The reasons? If I had to guess, I would guess these: 1. The company is not performing well, at least in part due to market conditions; 2. It is very hard work working with–and between–competing and antagonistic teams of PE guys…it wore down on him; 3. Due to both 1 and 2, the company is not headed towards where Bishop wanted it to go when he formed it all those years ago…and that can take the wind out of your sails. More on this in this week’s issue of min’s b2b.)

But what interests me most about this at this point is that it was effectively announced as a comment on my blog. And not on the most current story, but the last story I wrote about Ascend. Is this new?

I just got off the phone with Cam Bishop, CEO of Ascend Media, and he confirmed to me what I reported below: Ascend’s Physician’s Money Digest will be shuttering after the November issue, and that Family Practice Recertification and Internal Medicine World Report will fold at the end of the year.  Also to report: Ascend has sold Dental Products Shopper.  To whom?  Find out in a few minutes at minonline.com.  I’m going to write a story about it.  There will be more yet in min’s b2b on Friday.

I was sent a tip today that Ascend’s Physician’s Money Digest will be shuttering after the November issue, and that Family Practice Recertification and Internal Medicine World Report will fold at the end of the year.  I called Will Passano, division president, and Cam Bishop, CEO of the company, and left messages.  I also emailed Bishop.  No response so far. (If you have more news on this story, please email me at jgreenfield@accessintel.com.)

This is just more negative news coming out of a company that seemed to have so much promise when it was formed.   This year alone, Ascend has sold its top-performing division (Stagnito) to BNP Media, and lost a top executive in Ron Wall.  When I’ve spoken to top executives at Ascend about the state of the company this past year, they’ve said the right things, but didn’t sound to happy or confident.

Meanwhile, Wall goes to Apprise Media, and is now part of an organization that has increased revenues by 33% and profits by 55% in the two years it has existed, the company announced today: both through acquisition and organic growth.

Troubles that we’ve seen this year at Ascend, BNP/Stagnito, and Cygnus are unfortunate for those companies, the people that work there, and the industry as a whole, but these strong profit and revenue increases from Apprise go to show that the news isn’t always all bad, even in a print-challeneged 2007.

I was having lunch today with a friend in the industry.  We had both been watching some of the B2B deals that have gone through in the past year or so.  While the mega-deal of the year involved the expansion of an already huge Penton Media into the second largest diversified B2B media company in the country, the other two that we discussed saw the formation of two very different kind of companies.

Bill Reilly’s Summit Business Media, although it has plans to get very large, is focused on the service industries–finance, accounting, insurance, etc–exclusively at this point.  And Paul Mackler’s HMP Communications is focused on health.  In fact, last week, Bill Colbert told me for min’s b2b that he, along with VSS, his PE backer, was going to focus on building a single-industry company.  And Ascend Media has recently gone from diversification with Stagnito (health and food) to focus.

Will the new generation of B2B startups aspire to the Reed/Penton/Cygnus model?  Or will they be more focused?

Last week, when complaints to me from Stagnito employees were at a fever pitch, I thought it prudent to call the company and, first, assess the veracity of the claims, and, second, make them aware that I was hearing a lot of complaints if they were somehow unaware of the unrest. I ended up speaking with Rita Foumia, the HR director at BNP. Here’s what she had to say:

“We aren’t setting up new rules. What we have in place as company policies and procedures we have to enforce for all employees. We’re not going to set up special rules and implement them for Stagnito employees.“

Regarding the abolition of all unofficial telecommuting agreements between managers and employees:

“If they have a telecommuting agreement in place, that’s the way it’s going to stay. If we have someone that doesn’t have a written, formal agreement, then we don’t know about it. We don’t have any documentation on that, and it’s my responsibility to follow up with everybody. Until then, they have to come into the office. The problem is that we have a loty of people working from home whenever they want to, and we can’t have that.”

Regarding taking away vacation days accrued throughout the year and giving employees only five vacation days the rest of the year:

“Ascend had said they were not going to pay out the vacation days of its Stagnito employees. But now, Ascend is paying the unused/accrued vacation. They got their checks today [this was last week], with a letter from Ascend. We gave them an additional five days for the rest of the year.”

Regarding not giving employees the employee manual immediately:

“Our manual is on the intranet. And they all have access to it now. What we didn’t want to do is overwhelm anybody. The biggest concerns they’d have is employment and benefits. We all wanted to make sure that they all got paid the same way they did before the transaction happened.“

And, in summary:

“We’re trying to make it as smooth as of a transition as possible. We have to implement our policies.“

This may all be true, but the fact is, I’m still hearing from my sources that there is widespread unrest at Stagnito. I’ve heard that many employees are actively searching for new work. If so, that’s bad news for BNP.

One aspect of M&A that is often overlooked by those of us that follow it is what happens to the daily lives of the employees that are affected by the moves. Some lose jobs, others get promoted, and many pass through relatively unscathed. In the case of the Stagnito employees, scathed might be more apt.

Word from employees at Stagnito is that Ascend has decided to retroactively not match its employees’ 401k contributions in 2007. For those people who contribute 10-15% of their incomes to their 401k, this is a huge financial blow, and one that was certainly not planned for.

I had heard at the ABM Spring Meeting in May that Stagnito was for sale. A few weeks later, we printed an analysis of Ascend’s food books (Stagnito) in min’s b2b. A few weeks later, the volume was turned up on the rumor, and we discussed it here. But it wasn’t until late June that we pegged BNP as a possible strategic buyer.

Now that it’s happened, and a directly competitive strategic has taken over the growing Stagnito business (growing according to Cam Bishop, CEO of Ascend; although the properties are down in ad pages: 1.44%, according to our exclusive group publishers’ coverage, which begins this week in min’s b2b), what is to be done with Stagnito?

I’ve been in contact with a source inside the company, and, apparently, the mood in the trenches is not one of jubilation. There is some uncertainty as to what will happen with the brands. The Stagnitos have already said their goodbyes to the staff. And I can’t help but think of how some of the integration between previously competitive brands at Penton has gone–so far.