In case you weren't aware from coverage at our sister sites Valleywag and Gawker, PC World Editor in Chief Harry McCracken has resigned. The reason he resigned—the company's CEO killing a story entitled "Ten Things We Hate About Apple"—shows how the magazine's editorial is fighting hard to keep its integrity, and that McCracken's departure shows that he's not going to put up with this crap.
You see, CEO Crawford apparently told editors that their reviews and articles were too critical of the vendors—the same vendors who advertise in their magazine. Hence, the order came down that they "had to start being nicer to advertisers."
Another reason why it's interesting: according to Wired, the newly minted CEO of PC World, Colin Crawford, used to be CEO of MacWorld. When Colin was at his former job, Steve Jobs would call him up any time the Apple CEO had a problem with a story MacWorld was working on. The two mags, MacWorld and PC World, are owned by the parent company IDG.
Any time ad dollars influence reviews is a bad thing, but when the CEO issues an order directly, well, that's just bad news bears. Maybe the CEO thinks he's helping the company make money, but when no one is buying mags or reading editorial because the CEO's padding the review with ad money, that's going to be pretty bad for business.
When reached for comment, Harry had this to say:
...I resigned yesterday over a disagreement about editorial stuff, and I'm not angry at anyone, and continue to admire IDG and PC World. This company has been very, very good to me—and I have many friends here who I know will continue to do top-notch work. (I'll probably continue to do some writing for PCW, too.)
To Crawford: If you want to make a ton of money, keep editorial sacred, bring back Harry with a raise, apologize to him and the staff, and try to understand that no one wants to read corrupt editorial.
It couldn't have been a decision Harry made lightly, but he made it without hesitation and we commend him for it. And we'd like to take this minute to reiterate that no matter where Gizmodo's ad dollars are coming from, it will in no way affect our reviews. Nobody can pay for pantsworthiness.