Editor Returns to PC World, But Does "Good" Win Out?

In another of my blogs I had mentioned that PC World editor Harry McCracken had left the publication because of pressure from the advertising side of the house. It seems that a pro/con set of articles about Macs - both written by people who knew and liked the machines - had drawn ire either the advertiser didn't like negative press, or someone was afraid that it wouldn't.

So now McCracken is back at PC World after a week and the magazine's CEO, Colin Crawford, has returned to his previous duties as vice president of online content. Some in the publishing industry have been cheering this as a rare victory of integrity over advertising, but I'm not sure that's really the case.

This seems clearly a move to stem bad press. Had publisher IDG really thought that advertising pressure to censor articles was so egregious, I suspect it would have dismissed Crawford. But it didn't. Instead, management transferred him back to from whence he came. But IDG has been vocal about how online is really the future for the company. So the person who was ready to push editors and tailor content (and pretty mild content at that - oooh, the puck mouse was a loser, what a burn!) to turn a magazine into a PR outlet is now in charge of the publisher's future. Now there's a decisive - and telling - move.