I grew up in the media business in awe of Ziff Davis. In the 1980s and 1990s publishing power was personified by ZD. The company got sliced and diced in several transactions during the 1990s. The involvement of Softbank starting in 1995 turned out to be the key reason for ZD's decline. Over a period of years Softbank management basically destroyed the fiber of the once mighty ZD. And perhaps the killer of all moves was the sale of ZD Net (the Ziff Davis network of Web sites) to CNET in a really absurd and strange transaction in late 1999 (perhaps 2000).

ZD recently published their quarterly numbers (thanks for pointing this out goes to rafit ali). Check these out and you will find a sick company with declining EBITDA. The published information does not tell the reader that ZD has debt approaching $400 million. But it does tell us that the CFO has exited. An exiting CFO is not a good sign. The CFO usually knows the health of an organization better than anyone. When the CFO leaves the ship that usually means the vessel is sinking.

Interestingly the press release mentions that ZD is having growth in the Internet space. This is good news for Internet companies such as Jupitermedia and others that compete with ZD for ad dollars. ZD's decline means that print business magazines are losing ad revenues to online media properties --- a trend that will only accelerate.