Reed Elsevier Print Mags Going Digital

Last week the trade publishing company, Reed Elsevier, put dozens of its magazines, including Variety and Publishers Weekly, up for sale, sending shock waves through the jittery print advertising market.

And, in what is the perfect metaphor for the larger transition the media industry is experiencing, Reed also announced that it intends to acquire ChoicePoint, the controversial database company that analyzes consumer behavior for the insurance industry and other clients. (Controversial because ChoicePoint was exposed as responsible for a widely publicized series of personal privacy data breaches in 2005.)

But Reed is clearly gambling that the digital information services, where business clients subscribe to its offerings, is a better strategic direction than traditional magazine publishing, even in the relatively profitable B-to-B market.

In a press release, the company said the move to shed its Reed Business Information (RBI) unit was an attempt to reduce its vulnerability to "advertising markets and cyclicality." The company sold another of its magazine units, Harcourt Education, just last year.

Meanwhile, the ChoicePoint acquisition will continue Reed's move into online services, where it already owns the LexisNexis database service, among others.

RBI reported an adjusted operating profit of 13.24 percent last year on sales of $1.76 billion.