Here’s a story that’s been all over the national business news that has a very strong B2B angle: The hostile takeover attempt at CNET by Jana Partners and Sandell Asset Management, two massive hedge funds.

I won’t go into details, because I write a lengthy article about it in this week’s min’s b2b (I’ll link to the subscribe page here, because it’s just easier for me than retyping the 1,700 words in this blog), but, suffice it to say, I think that B2B media execs, especially those in the tech publishing space should be following closely. That means you, Bob Carrigan (IDG), Steve Weitzner (Ziff Davis Enterprise), David Levin (CMP), Jason Young (Ziff Davis), and Greg Strakosch (TechTarget). I would also advise that smaller operators, those of e-media startups and small content companies, watch this story closely–especially the company’s stock price, which can be found here.

(Hint: Right now, based on the company’s stock price, it would sell at about 23xEBITDA. Chew on that.)

For everyone’s benefit, I’m taking a little break from blogging today, b2b-ers.  Enjoy these words of wisdom from Jim Casella.  You can also check out his blog here.

As we start the new year, the word that keeps coming up in politics and business is “momentum.” Hillary lost it in Iowa but regained it in New Hampshire. McCain lost it six months ago when his campaign started to run out of money before he had run any ads, but he regained it in New Hampshire and hopes to keep it in Michigan and South Carolina. Rudy believes he will gain it in Florida, but it could be too late in the game going into Super Tuesday, February 5th. Mitt claims he has won two silvers, but silvers do not give you momentum. Edwards clearly does not have it and pressure will mount on him to get out of the race after South Carolina and make it a two-person race for the Democratic nomination. Huckabee claims he had it for a moment in Iowa, but he lost it in New Hampshire. Obama clearly has it, but it slowed down a bit in New Hampshire. One of the candidates in each party will certainly grab the momentum ring on Super Tuesday and ride it to the White House in November.

It is clear that winning or coming close against great odds can establish momentum. The Giants lost to the Patriots in late December, but by playing his first team and coming close, Tom Coughlin gave the Giants the momentum they needed to beat the Bucs on the road in the wild card NFC playoff game and beat the Cowboys this past Sunday to get into the NFC Championship game. The Packers seemed to lose it towards the end of the season, but they regained it in the snow at Lambeau Field against the Seahawks. It brought back memories of Lombardi’s Packers, with Hornung, Taylor and Bart Starr in their glory years. Brett Favre keeps getting better with age! The Patriots continue to have it as they move closer to running the table. Can they be denied before Super Sunday, February 3rd? Not if momentum has anything to do with it.

min’s b2b keeps us informed every week on which publications and categories are hot and have momentum and which continue to be under pressure. Up until this past year, Hanley-Wood clearly had momentum, particularly with its residential titles. Its focused approach was a winning hand, just as enterprise computing was from ‘92-’01 when CMP, IDG and Ziff Davis rode the momentum wave. Google has it while Yahoo! has clearly lost it. Will Google be able to maintain it during this cooling-down period if it cannot introduce an innovative new product to complement search?

The media business is very similar to politics and sports. When you are winning and on top, it feels like it will last forever. But as Andy Grove, the former CEO of Intel, and others have stated, “only the paranoid survive.” Those of us who grew up on the advertising side of the business know how quickly fortunes can change and how difficult it can be to represent a property that is not #1 or #2 in its category.

As managers, we need to make certain that our businesses are constantly innovating to insure that we are not in the position of losing momentum for our core brands. Media brands with significant good will and brand equity will allow for tarnished brands to be rebuilt, but it is very challenging. Does anyone recall brands like Atari and Sega, which were once the leading video game platforms and seemed invincible? Keep checking those scorecards and doing research to insure that your leading properties will deliver strong results in ‘08 and beyond.

Recently, a good B2B media source pointed out something that gave me great satisfaction: that I was right. This particular instance (and I think I can probably count all of them on one hand), though, is bittersweet. In May, I predicted, using very crude calculations, that Ziff Davis might run out of money some time in the middle of the third quarter. Ziff hit the date on the nose, declaring that it would not make a scheduled interest payment on its 2009 senior notes on August 15.

Being right in this case is bittersweet for me because, first of all, I was not rooting for this to happen. I was rooting for a miracle: some way in which the great brands that ZD operates could somehow get out from under the crushing debt that has shadowed their operations for six years. Maybe they still can.

But the real story behind this story–also contributing to the bitter half–is that this company isn’t just a publishing house, brick and mortar and money. It’s not just a hallowed name in B2B. It’s not just an important vestige of Bill Ziff’s time on earth. It’s also made up of people–hundreds of people who now have to wake up wondering what their job status will be that day and the next.

It’s very easy in other industries to think of a large company as just a bunch of factories or operations or services that result in a final product that often can be stacked in warehouses and snatched off store shelves. But in the media industry, the output is a manifestation of a collective personality. Future issues of PC Magazine will be an ink and paper representation of the PC Mag personality, headed by the new EIC, Lance Ulanoff.

It might not be useful business information to remember that the 300 or so remaining Ziff employees are in this, too, but I can’t help but think of it.