The pressure on B2B publications is creating turmoil in the industry, as publications are sold, closed, or transformed in the wake of plummeting advertising sales.  The biggest changes last week were in the portfolio of Nielsen, which sold Hollywood Reporter, Adweek, Billboard, and other publications plus ShoWest and other trade shows to new company e5 Global Media Holdings.  Nielsen also shut down Kirkus, the book review journal that published over 500 pre-publication reviews a year, and Editor and Publisher, which covered the floundering newspaper industry. 

On the other side of the street, Reed Business Information title Variety is in the process of moving its Website back behind a pay wall.  The company’s articles had been free on the Web for several years after the pay wall was removed, but with the decline of ad dollars, it’s now deemed a necessary component of the business model to get readers to pay for content, rather than simply viewing ads. 

RBI, of course, is in the process of trying to sell much of its magazine portfolio, including Publisher’s Weekly (now one of the few sources for large numbers of book reviews), Video Business, and Playthings (see “PW, Playthings, Video Business for Sale”).