In an interesting reversal, departed PC World Editor Harry McCracken has returned to the magazine as "vice-president, editor in chief" as of this morning. What's even more surprising is that CEO Colin Crawford has been dropped from the CEO position and is taking up the executive vice president, online position. He's even given the editorial staff an apology for killing the story. His blog has removed the post about the EIC changes at PC World. The situation sounds sour for him, but I doubt Harry would have returned to work with Crawford after such a public disagreement.
But really, PC World had no choice. After 16 years of service to IDG, and the this current episode highlighting his integrity, the magazine couldn't really move forward without looking like editorial corruption was in place. Unless Harry came back.
His conditions? That "editors were allowed to be editors." He made no comment about whether or not Colin's reshuffled position were the terms of his return.
IDG is going start a search for a CEO for both PC World and Macworld, two magazines that Colin Crawford used to be the CEO of. Our thoughts? All the reader outrage online after the story first broke is what caused the sudden 180. Or, we suppose it's probably more of a 540 since PCWorld actually went ahead and published a tame 10 Things We Hate About Apple anyway.
As an aside, I think it could have been better to have PC World write the "Apple Love" piece, and Macworld write the "Apple Hate" piece. Nothing better than to provide surprising thoughts to your already hypnotized user base.
Editor in Chief Harry McCracken Returns to PC World [PCWorld]