Heard from Ann Mutschler at EDN and she clarified the duties of the remaining news room. Suzanne Deffree is handling distribution news and Ann also picks up stuff from Intel and AMD, but the two back each other up and cover pretty much anything that might be interesting, depending on their time limitations.

Also learned in other places, that the initial reports that Reed was also selling off the exhibition business were not true. That makes more sense since I know that exhibitions make big money for Reed.

What is especially interesting are the numbers Reed has reported. Reed had $231 million in operating profits on $1.76 billion in revenue, which is a better profit margin than Exxon (7 percent versus 1 percent). Revenue actually increased in 2007 by 4 percent, but all on the strength of online revenue growth. Online rose 20 percent while print dropped 2 percent.. Online revenues are 30 percent of RBI’s overall.

In the US, online revenues also grew, though overall growth was flat, which accounts for the layoffs.

However, according to the audits, print readership and circulation was as good as ever, meaning people still read the magazines but the industry no longer wants to support the media. And that is going to be the subject of several posts in the near future.