Seed Media Group, publisher of the Seed Magazine and the Seed Scienceblogs (the site you are on right now), made an announcement last week (PDF) about its new international partnership with Hubert Burda Media conglomerate:
The partnership will initially lead to the European development of ScienceBlogs, the largest online science community (www.scienceblogs.com). Since its launch in January 2006 by Seed Media Group, ScienceBlogs has grown to include 65 blogs across all areas of science, and attracted more than 1.7 million visits in August (Google Analytics), its twentieth straight month of growth. ScienceBlogs has seen its traffic grow by more than 500 percent since launch, with 30 percent now coming from outside the United States.
"We are excited to be entering the European market with Hubert Burda Media, a company that shares our values and that we consider to be among the most visionary and forward-thinking in the media industry," said Adam Bly, founder and CEO of Seed Media Group. "Today marks an important first step in Seed Media Group's international expansion."
"We see this partnership as a chance to help grow a global digital community of high social relevance. We share Seed Media Group's belief that 'Science is Culture' and are delighted to now be associated with an organization at the forefront of this cultural shift," said Dr. Marcel Reichart, Managing Director, R&D, Marketing & Communications, Hubert Burda Media.
This is great news! First - don't worry: nobody is getting fired or "downsized" and you will not see any obvious changes here any time soon. But there will be great changes in the future, i.e., more European blogs (perhaps even in languages other than English at some point in the future) and even more European readers. Stay tuned.
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Who cares about Europeans anyway?
No, seriously, there are already some non-US ScienceBloggers, but more are certainly welcome.
Yes, while we are definitely US-centric, we do have several people either from elsewhere, or currently living elsewhere. For instance, Selva is from India, but currently living in the UK. Tim Lambert and John Wilkins are in Australia. Jennifer Jacquet and Sandra Kiume are in Canada. Martin Rundkvist is in Sweden. Nick Anthis and Mo Costandi are in the UK. Chris Rowan is currently in South Africa. I came originally from Yugoslavia. Steinn is Icelandic. Razib is originally from Mars. Anyone else?
Quite diverse, but we want more!
But if you Americans are descended from Europeans....
........How come there are still Europeans ?
Well, think about it this way: there are humans, but monkeys are still around - they are our uncles and aunts! ;-)
//But if you Americans are descended from Europeans....
//........How come there are still Europeans ?
YMMD!
//We are excited to be entering the European market with Hubert Burda Media, a company that shares our values and that we consider to be among the most visionary and forward-thinking in the media industry
Huh? Marketing fluff. Basically Burda Media has no science experience at all. It's magazines and newspapers are mostly boulevard style and it's largest(?) magazine, focus, has imho very bad science reporting.
But oh well, they're very large, and as long as Seed controls the focusing, it's not a bad move at all. :)
I bought a subscription to that for my fiance. Big mistake; it's not just "bad" it's down-right bl**dy awful, and frequently just plain wrong. As a classic example, a couple of months ago, they had a "debate" on global warming between a climate scientist and Patrick Moore. Apparently Sir Patrick Moore's opinion - as an astronomer - that sun-spot activity is responsible for global warming constitutes a scientific controversy. I do wonder whether they'd air his views on women in the workplace if they ever do a sociological feature...
I don't think the Focus franchise in the UK is the same as Focus in other countries. In the UK it's part of BBC publishing. It would be wrong to blame the BBC takeover for sending the magazine downmarket, but it's not been a positive influence either. Focus Italia on the other hand was a good magazine when I was last able to get my hands on a copy.
It would interesting to see if this made SEED more widely available in Europe as I can't purchase a copy off the shelf to buy, and I'm hardly in the back of beyond. In fact the place I grew up was so urban it could boast the the nearest town was large enough to have a permanent set of traffic lights.
Above all thanks for your interest in our partnership with Scienceblogs for Europe. And it is good feedback for us to read this thread. On Burda and science: FOCUS Magazine in Germany has a considered reputation in conveying the public understand of science and introduced infografics on genetics or global warming in a newsmagazine very early on and keeps this legacy up with large science and health related stories. Just last week FOCUS editors won a prize for their science photography. The UK Focus magazine is not owned by Burda, nor the Italian one. And the Hubert Burda Foundation is promoting interdiscplinary arts & science coversation for over a decade , e.g. the Iconic Turn lectures, research fellowships and publications. With the DLD conference we are taking a look on science culture, too. And we would be happy to intensify this in the upcoming DLD conference with the SEED partnership for Scienceblogs.