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Shotgun "wedding" for NLJ and Legal Times

By Mark Obbie

No matter how Incisive Media spins it, its announcement today that it is "merging" Legal Times and the National Law Journal under one banner is the shutdown of Legal Times -- a best-case-scenario shutdown, perhaps, but still a shutdown. And that makes me angry, or sad, or maybe just my usual state of angry/sad as I watch what's happening to journalism and the people I've spent my career with (I'm speaking broadly, not just about Incisive Media, but now would be an apt time to link to my conflicts disclosure). This anger of mine is purely editorial, and not personal (as my countrymen might say). I don't pretend to know the business realities that drove this. I know the people who made this decision and who are quoted in the announcement, and they are decent, thoughtful people who would support Legal Times if they could find a way. But to spin it as an enhanced product for D.C. lawyers is disingenuous by half. Bill Pollak remarks on the enmity that existed between the Brill and Finkelstein companies, when they merged more than 11 years ago. He's right about that. He's right also that it faded. But among some of us warhorses, it's still there. Let me explain it:Legal Times, editorially, made sense because it was a well defined product for an audience of narrowly defined shared interests. The NLJ has long been a general-interest newspaper for lawyers, which is a prescription for blandness. Its latest definition, as articulated by Pollak, is for midsized law firms and litigators, but that's probably just a product of happenstance -- which lawyers seemed to buy it -- rather than logic. In fact, and in spite of its impressive journalistic past (I've been a reader since 1982), in the last decade-plus it has lurched from strategy to strategy, and aimed itself at any lawyer who would have it. The legal business is not a monolith. The Des Moines commercial litigator has zero interests in common with the Newark criminal defense lawyer or Austin divorce lawyer or Boston patent lawyer, unless they happen to work for the 100 -- OK, maybe 200 -- largest law firms. So why would the NLJ lay claim to the business of midsized law? To keep it out of the way of The American Lawyer, which is about Big Law. That's a function of corporate peacemaking, not market-driven editorial sense.So after we cut the crap, we can acknowledge that the company made a hard cost-cutting decision that is probably sensible on some level, but fundamentally guts what Legal Times was to its readers. A quality magazine or newspaper is one that understands its readers and is tailored specifically to their interests (and then does its job with intelligence and quality). Legal Times -- and its dazzling alumni club -- got that. It will be missed.

Full post as published by Lawbeat on March 16, 2009 (boomark / email).