RBI Divestment Watch blog closed?
A blog account of developments with Reed Elsevier’s divestment (that’s sale to you and me) of Reed Business Information (RBI) has been shut down.
Started by an operation’s manager at Elsevier’s Total Jobs Group, Divestment Watch was started in March after the sale of RBI was announced in February.
The blog introduced itself as follows:
“What happens when your division is divested (sold)? What will it mean to me? What is the process? How can I prepare myself? That’s the topic of this blog, focussing on the Reed Elsevier sale of Reed Business.”
The most recent posting on the site is from Tuesday last week, but access to the site is now denied (though a cached version can still be seen).
A post on May 2 said the blog was attracting attention from the company:
“Rumour has it that RE and RBI board members have visited DivestmentWatch, and it has even come up during chats with the bankers (UBS) and the consultants (PWC) so it’s nice to know that there are some people interested and hopefully listening.
“DivestmentWatch has had 5000+ unique visitors so far, and averages about 150 to 200 a day, with a regular core readership of about 50-60 (thanks for your support!). I hope that it has helped you in some way.”
Can anyone shed light on why the blog has been removed?
May 12th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
He has posted several more posts since then.
A couple just this past weekend.
I checked it late last night here in the U.S. and it was up. So it went down this morning.
Something is amiss for sure. I was one of a
small handful of people that was actually contributing.
My guess is he got an ultimatum when he showed up for work this morning. Take it down or pack your stuff and get out.
Gee, what a surprise. No wonder they’re going out of business.
May 12th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
Performance-related Pay For Journalists and Unofficial Blogging…
Ah, the good people (and by good people, I mean Laura) at Journalism.co.uk seem to be intent on making our lives here…interesting. Today, Laura’s posted on the blog pointing out that Divestment Watch, the blog run by a member of the……
May 12th, 2008 at 9:36 pm
Marty old chap,
Alas and alack! the home of our cosy little chats is no more!
Best of luck my dear boy - I did enjoy our sparring sessions. A bit like Alan Bates and Oliver Reed in front of the fire place!
May 12th, 2008 at 10:16 pm
TheOpsMgr is alive and well, still working at Totaljobs Group, and in future will focus his blogging on IT Operations… anyone want to know about ITIL?
May 12th, 2008 at 11:39 pm
But OpsMgr - what happened? Why has the blog been removed?
May 13th, 2008 at 8:55 am
I thought this day might come. They certainly wouldn’t want the truth to get out there, and I knew they’d work to squelch it. Meanwhile…we keep working, all while the folks way up the chain want us to be as sheep-like as possible. In one of our staff meetings recently, we were told that news stories we had found were “garbage” and anything we’d find on a blog was, too.
They’ve GOT to realize that the truth WILL become known. They can’t do anything about it, either.
May 13th, 2008 at 11:26 am
Hi Marty,
Thanks for your iconoclastic support for DivestmentWatch - I will miss both you and Eunuch.
Hopefully we’ll have that beer over here one day
cheers,
TheOpsMgr
May 14th, 2008 at 10:19 am
In the spirit of public service I’ve posted up the cache from Divestment Watch here: http://privatefraser.wordpress.com/divestment-watch/
Apologies for the blatant copyright infringement.
Any RBI staffers who wish to continue the dialogue or post up stories can use the email or comment functions.