DID No Longer The Old Joe Katzman Enterprise — Dear readers, Let me start with a brief exec summary: Defense Industry Daily (DID) as youve come to know it can no longer operate as an ongoing concern with its current ownership and in its present financial situation. This is the result of a variety of factors, and hopefully can still be quickly mended with help from an established publisher or organization interested in salvaging our know-how, reach, and intellectual property. Read on if youd like to know how we got there and what we still have to offer. As many of you know, we at DID have spent a decade developing a unique blend of fresh news, program data, and acquisition timelines to serve procurement officers and contractors in the defense space. Born as a modest weblog, we have grown this website and its newsletter into one of the major online destinations for professionals in its field, toe to toe with the websites of trade magazines established over decades. We are proud of having gained your attention and even trust, and I think that at our best, we have contributed to showing how modern online data/news hybrids can better serve their constituencies than traditional print publications. We have done so with barely any resources besides our stubborn determination and wit, if I may say so myself. And whenever we have fallen short, you have helped us improve our offering thanks to your generous but demanding feedback. Though their number is not sufficient to sustain the business in its present structure, our paid subscribers show that people and organizations will pay for news, data and analysis if its sufficiently distinctive from free offerings. So it is with heavy sorrow that I have to announce that DID as youve come to know it is on hiatus until further notice. DID has always been more successful as a publication than as a business, but the 2008 crisis, followed by sequestration last year, didnt make what was always a brash bet any easier. No amount of effort was spared in the last 3 years to make DID more timely, relevant, useful, and usable. Yet the business is simply not viable in its present condition, not just for external but also for internal reasons. A deeper analysis of the why and how would be interesting in its own right, but will have to wait. As they say, experience is a comb life gives you when youre bald. At this critical juncture, I would like to express my deep gratitude to Sarah Roberts and Kay Harrison for their dedicated work in sales, operations and customer support. They are diligent professionals who have provided stellar attention to our customers, and I recommend them highly to any future employers. I am sure that those of you who have interacted with them will agree. Under present conditions DID is not in a position to feature the updated content meeting the standards of breadth, depth, timeliness and accuracy we set for ourselves and advertised to our subscribers. With six figures worth of unpaid compensation in arrears owed to myself, the company is effectively bankrupt - though Chairman Tig Tillinghast doesnt seem to want to recognize it just quite yet - and wide differences between shareholders are getting in the way of resolving this in a more graceful way. Presumably a reasonable offer from a third party could still sort out said outstanding differences between existing shareholders, settle payments in arrears and intellectual property issues between DID LLC and myself, and put all this behind us. For the time being, DID remains a very valuable vehicle thanks to its established position and wealth of archives. A backer or acquirer with the wherewithal and shared vision to not just save the publication, but help turn it into what it can be. A company, say, with an established presence in Washington, DC could market our offering beyond single user and department licenses and open up enterprise sales. I realize this is a messy situation that should have best be handled privately, and I would have very much liked to keep it that way. But Im convinced there is something there, in the publication and the know how behind it. Please contact me with any serious inquiries that Ill make sure to take to the other shareholders. In the meantime, I do not wish to be party to any extend and pretend effort that may misrepresent the amount and quality of the content issued by DID in the future, or any other dubious scenarios discussed internally. I remain reachable at the personal contact info below. Yours, Olivier Travers olivier@oliviertravers +1 212-655-9674
Posted on: Tue, 06 Jan 2015 13:40:24 +0000
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