Two commenters argued today that our coverage of the brewing civil war inside Hachette was way too harsh on digital VP Todd Anderman, who we dubbed a "digital dunce." Anderman, you'll recall, is said to have offended the sensibilities of deputies Joe Berean and Keith Pollock with a mind-numbingly-long series of reorganizations and content aggregation strategies. The case against Anderman as an all-thumbs manager was only cemented by his accidental big-screen projection, at a staff meeting, of some instant-messenger venting of work frustrations to his wife. But our comments say the fault for the disaster at Hachette lies not with Anderman but with fashion primadonnas like Zee and his allies, including former store-salesman Pollock. "Todd's reputation in this business is stellar and for you to put such a nasty hit piece like this is deplorable," one wrote. Well, his reputation isn't universally "stellar," judging from the fallout from Berean and Pollock's resignation, reported in our original post. But every feud has two sides, and far be it from us to ignore either. The pro-Anderman comments are reproduced after the jump.

swordsmen at 10:36 AM Admin Reply

You guys got this story TOTALLY wrong. Todd is one of the smartest people in the business and is trying to make a company that had a terrible web strategy work. Magazines are failing because people like Joe Zee spend 200k in Milan getting his balls waxed. Remember Vitals-yeah. So Todd is dealing with a bunch of entitled fashion losers who wouldn't know the internet from a hole in their ass and basically has to start from scratch. These people that are whining sucked at their jobs and created websites with ZERO traffic. Todd's reputation in this business is stellar and for you to put such a nasty hit piece like this is deplorable, especially from an individual who does not court the press. Man I fucking hate publishing. I can just imagine all those entitled bitches and queens going, "Oh my God, what does he know?" Well when it comes to the web, everything.



lizzybennett at 11:45 AM Admin Reply

@swordsmen:

I've heard relatively the same thing.

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