While most B2b publishers are off between 15% and 30%, Sean Griffey, President of Fierce Markets, revealed that his company had increased 2009 revenues 40% year-over-year at min day earlier this week . I sat down with Sean to ask him about one of Fierce's new revenue generating initiatives, whitepaper directories.

I'll be covering the topic in more depth at the ABM Annual Conference, where I hope to dive more deeply into how publishers can turn their audience development initiatives into profit centers instead of cost centers.

Jeff Reinhardt's comment on my last post motivated me to post my favorite midyear revenue driving initiatives that I've been associated with.

I have a few more than those below, but I've got to get back to preparing for the Annual Conference! My presentation is on these types of initiatives: how to generate ideas, how to prioritize them, and examples of ideas that could work this year.

I asked John French, former Penton Media CEO, why he was attending this year's American Business Media Annual Conference in Amelia Island, FL.

I asked John a variety of questions on how to drive revenue in the second half of 2009, why he's attending this year's Annual Conference, and where he thinks the industry is at today.

The Annual Conference runs from May 3rd to May 6th.

I’ve got some exciting news to share with everyone; I’ve decided to leave Penton Media in order to pursue launching my own business, Vital Business Media. This was not an easy decision for me to make but a choice that I am very confident in.

Google's new browser, Chrome, could be a Trojan horse for media companies.

The browser initially struck me as a fantastic leap forward for Web-based journalists. The ability to make a Web page (like your Web site's admin page) a shortcut on your desktop and load up like an application seemed like one that would help journalists and media companies alike. The new JavaScript rendering engine would ensure that the complex admin pages and their functionality would load quickly and respond rapidly.

However, after reading this post from CNET on Chrome's terms of service (TOS), I've become worried.

A well meaning editor could easily download and use Chrome to post content to his/her publication's Web site and unintentionally grant Google a license for that very content.

Here are the passages that specifically concern me:

One issue that gets editors and lawyers both uncomfortable is the idea of free form user-generated content. Typical questions include:

• Can we be held responsible for what people say on our site?
• Should we police the comments to make sure that inappropriate statements in comments don't make it to the live site?
• If we see an inappropriate statement, do we edit the comment, refuse to post it, or let it go through?

Editor and Publisher has a great article on what some large news organizations are doing with their comment moderation.

Are the early, passionate and uniquely authoritative bloggers being displaced by ego-driven wannabe entrepreneurs and PR hacks that all cover the same rumors and/or news?

The newest version of Omniture's site catalyst is absolutely horrendous for media companies because the new UI is completely catering to retailers. The newest version defaults metrics to "revenue" instead of page views, meaning that every time we want to run a report, we have to jump through hoops to get the data. If I'm a retailer, I love the convenience, but if I'm not, you just killed my productivity. The fact that you can't globally change this preference is mind boggling.

Just a note that my site went down... and that I totally messed it up. I'm in the process of restoring it now, and I'll be back to blogging shortly.