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The blogging world is abuzz about San Francisco Chronicle and InfoWorld troubles.

InfoWorld is apparently shutting down their print magazine to focus on events and online.

Now if I were the head of InfoWorld I would prefer to have a “spin” on this entire “episode” instead of being defined by the blogging community. Some EVIL ideas (I admit these are evil but they would work is my sense).

1. I would have partnered with Go Green Initiative and said – “We are trying to use less paper, so we can do our bit to help the world use less of our natural resources”. Then make sure that for a whole week my entire staff only used mass transit to make a point. Trust me it’ll get a lot of press, especially from the tree hugging crowd.

2. Make a big deal about the online IT Exec Connect at InfoWorld section highlighting the social network and social media as TAKING over the IT news business. Showcase 3-4 key participants who can blog about how they prefer the online services offered by InfoWorld to the print (which they never read anyway).

3. Work with Nick Carr and come up with a changing trends of the IT industry that favors niche providers like themselves and others rather than generalists like Information Week.

So, why did they not do any of this, but rather let Rafat Ali and few other very influential bloggers “spread the news” before the news?