adrian monck

The case of the disappearing Reed Elsevier blog

The Telegraph reports today that Reed Elsevier is packaging up an HP deal (ok, a loan) for potential buyers of Reed Business Information.

The fate of RBI is a matter of academic interest to business watchers and – well, academics – but if you actually work there it’s a little more interesting. Like, ‘your livelihood’ interesting.

So, a while back, an RBI employee and recent MBA, Stephen Thair set up a blog to analyse and comment on the sell-off – he called it Divestment Watch (warning: dead link).

Of course, any employee could set up an anonymous blog to snipe, speculate and sling mud.

Thair’s blog was a thoughtful and open attempt to engage with a business process that loomed rather large over his – and his colleagues’ – future.

It isn’t there any more, although you can find it cached on Google. I encountered Thair when he left a comment on this blog and I became a subscriber. I haven’t spoken to him directly.

I don’t know the reasons for the blog’s disappearance in early May. But if Thair has been told to shut it down then I think it’s a missed opportunity for Reed Elsevier to explore their options publicly, and it sends out yet another lousy message to people soon to be formerly known as employees.

We talk about companies needing to engage and communicate. It isn’t just a top down, inside out process. It isn’t always about communicating the good and the exciting.

The easiest way of managing these things is silence. Silence exiting employees with contract clauses. Silence existing employees with a quiet word. But is silence the only way of handling it?

Letting responsible employees communicate responsibly may be another option. Comments appreciated.

Adrian Monck

14 responses to “The case of the disappearing Reed Elsevier blog”

  1. I have spoken to Stephen about this, and he was asked to remove the blog.

    Obviously, I’m not thrilled by this, as it does run counter to what I’m trying to achieve at RBI, but the cultural mismatch between Reed Elsevier and Reed Business Information was one of the stated reasons for the divestment…

  2. Divestment Watch: Adrian Monck weighs in…

    Divestment Watch, the now defunct blog maintained by an RBI employee about our divestment by Reed Elsevier refuses to go quietly into the night.The latest blogger to mention its abrupt curtailment is Adrian Monck, professor of journalism at City……

  3. Most companies have taken that route – Reuters’ code forbids people from blogging about internal affairs – which presumably also means external approaches.

    But is that just the way it has to be? I tend to think the answer is yes. Hence the need for some kind of mediation.

  4. I still have a healthy amount of fond memories for RBI, but this just characterises the fact that a lot of people at the top (possibly of RE rather than RBI) simply don’t get ‘it’.

    It’s just a shame that Stephen didn’t post anonymously…

  5. Our code of conduct forbids us from doing anything that damages the reputation of the company and, so far, we’ve chosen to use that as the baseline of our blogging guidance.

    I suppose the problem is that we now have an essentially subjective standard. Something for us to do a little head-scratching to do internally over, I suspect.

  6. Of course, your highlighting the fact that the blog still ‘exists’ in the cache shows a whole other level of lack of understanding…

    With regards to Adrian’s comment, Scoble showed that internal blogging was not only possible but beneficial (before he went solo and started to believe his own hype that is…)

  7. Mother of God – I thought that we moved on from self-satisfied comments about “getting it” 18 months ago. Didn’t think there were any jejune folks left out there who believed that anyone more – never mind son – you just pat yourself on the back and keep telling yourself you’re in the “getting it” club.

    Outside of the smug confines of the latest catchphrases where reality bites:

    We do not know that RBI or RE originated the removal request so speculation on this seems pointless. I’d put a bet on it originating from the desk of a lawyer, but don’t believe that we can say anymore than that.

    The request could have come from – RBI, RE, UBS, JP Morgan, PWC or even a potential buyer. One of the last things Thair said was that he has contacted some of the PE companies rumoured to be bidding for RBI. Spooking potential buyers is bound to make everyone jumpy.

  8. Marty – I’m sorry my comment offended you.

    I spent so long at RBI with so many people desperately trying to change a business into one that utilised things like blogging for the benefit of that business, that it makes me slightly sad (not smug) that someone (whoever it is – you’re right, it could have come from any of those sources, which is something I didn’t consider) should demand this be taken down

    I’d like to think that at the wrong side of 30 I’m no longer jejune, and having been made redundant understand that occasionally reality does indeed bite. That doesn’t change my opinion though,

  9. Killing Stephen’s blog was really not a smart idea. He was providing intelligent comment on the divestment, and providing an outlet for others to do the same, He was scrupulously careful not to stray from public domain facts, as you’d expect from a bright MBA with a serious career. So now the comment is instead being provided by national newspaper business writers who don’t really understand RBI.

    Towards the end he ran a poll showing that 70-something per cent of respondents would acquire their own RBI product if it were broken out individually. A wildly hypothetical question, but a highly encouraging response from the point of view of Reed Elsevier – and one which the company couldn’t possibly generate for itself.

    What may not be obvious to everyone is that Stephen is an IS manager from the TotalJobs side of the house. I wonder if the company would have been as keen to jump on one of its journalists if they had run a similar blog?

  10. The Messenger’s comment very neatly encapsulates everything I was trying to say with my overly pithy original comment. If he hadn’t revealed his identity he could have posted much worse, and it would have been very hard for anyone to stop him. Instead they have shut off an intelligent stream of conversation, leaving it open to others with much less understanding of the internal culture.

  11. Hi everyone,

    Just to clarify what happened… I was “asked” to take the blog down by my Director on behalf of unspecified people towards the top of the food chain. I don’t know if they were RBI or RE but my assumption was that it was pretty close to Board level.

    I wasn’t given any particular reason for why the “request” was sent, other than it was causing some waves.

    It would have been nice to have been engaged on a more personal level and told why the blog was causing waves and why that was enough to offset any value the blog may have as a communications and discussion channel. But sadly that wasn’t to be.

    cheers,
    Steve

  14. Sadly TheOpsMgr is moving on from Totaljobs, RBI and RE! Time for a change and hopefully find a role where I can put both my IT and MBA skills to better use.
    So if anyone knows of any suitable jobs out there, please let me know at stephen DOT thair AT gmail DOT com.

    Will blog for food ;-)

    thanks for your support over the whole blog issue, very much appreciated.

    – Steve