PC World Brings Editor Back, Removes CEO
In a surprise reversal, IDG management removed Colin Crawford as PC World's CEO and reinstated Harry McCracken as Editor in Chief, after a dispute over a canceled Apple story led McCracken to quit. A memo just sent to PC World and Macworld staffers …
Context & Ripple Effects
This is a fast, complete reversal of a fight that broke into the open less than a week earlier. On May 3, Colin Crawford used his 'Colin's Corner' post to announce the EIC change at PC World after editor Harry McCracken quit over a canceled Apple story; by May 9, IDG had removed Crawford from the CEO role and confirmed McCracken's reinstatement, with PC World itself announcing its editor's return the same day.
The speed matters more than the outcome: an owner publicly siding with its editor against its own executive sets a visible precedent for how IDG handles the advertiser-vs-editorial tension across both PC World and sister title Macworld — the two titles whose Apple coverage sits closest to Apple's advertising relationships.
First-order effects
- Colin Crawford is out as PC World CEO and Harry McCracken is back as Editor in Chief, resolving in the editor's favor a dispute that began when an Apple story was canceled and McCracken resigned over it.
Second-order effects
- Advertisers and PR teams lose a proven lever: the episode demonstrates that canceling coverage to please a source like Apple can cost an executive his job, raising the internal price of similar interventions at IDG's other titles, including Macworld.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, tech publishers face pressure to codify an explicit firewall between sales and editorial decisions, since this case showed readers will treat a canceled story as a public credibility event rather than a private staffing matter.
The trend: Tech publishing is being pushed toward formalized editorial independence, as owners learn that visible advertiser interference in coverage costs more in credibility than any single story is worth.