The "whys" of the New York Times' acquisition of About.com from its magazine-oriented parent Primedia were pegged by our own Janice McCallum nearly two weeks ago in our weblog as a good move for Primedia, which never seemed to know how to get the most out of it. Much of the media twist on this sale is less than complimentary to the Times, but there's plenty of method in its purported madness. When you're stuck between weblogs getting more attention on breaking news and search engines becoming the "go to" place for research, it helps to build a business model that looks more like a general content portal such as Yahoo! than yesterday's newspapers. There's no better time to expand your business model than when others can't figure out what their model is supposed to be.

Click here to read the full News Analysis