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T A B L E__T A L K The iMac is coming! The iMac is coming! Discuss Apple's latest offering in the Digital Culture area of Table Talk - - - - - - - - - - R E C E N T L Y Let's Get This Straight Consciousness dethroned Hands off that data -- I'm European! Baring your soul to the Web The big chilly - - - - - - - - - - BROWSE THE - - - - - - - - - -
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BY JANELLE BROWN | Where the market goes, the magazines follow. The money these days is in the "New Economy" -- or Net economy, or technology industry, depending on the jargon du jour. And so the publishing industry is jumping to address the growing population of managers, businessmen and financiers who hope to wrest every last dime out of their modems and CPUs. This week, maverick-geek publishers Imagine Media launched Business 2.0, a tech-business monthly with the tag line "New Economy. New Rules. New Leaders." Business 2.0 is only two months behind the Industry Standard, IDG's weekly "Newsmagazine of the Internet Economy." Both of these magazines are up against the upstart Fast Company ("The magazine about work and life in the new economy") and veterans like the Red Herring, Upside and Wired. It's a tight market, with increasing competition from mainstream newspapers and magazines, as well as the daily reporting available online. Why do these magazines think they can survive? Just how many people are really interested in the rise and demise of each new wave of hot start-up companies? And what happens to this whole genre if the Net balloon bursts? Salon asked the publishers and editors themselves: James Daly, editor in chief of Business 2.0 (and a former Wired editor); John Battelle, publisher of the Industry Standard (another former Wired editor); Tony Perkins, CEO and editor in chief of the Red Herring; Richard Brandt, editor in chief of Upside; Dana Lyon, the publisher of Wired Magazine; and Pat Hagerty, publisher of Fast Company. Why does the world need your magazine, and how is it different from the slate of other technology business magazines? Daly (Business 2.0): Business 2.0 is a magazine which is designed for people who need to survive, to thrive, in a rapidly changing business environment. We call it a survival guide to the New Economy. I think [technology] is going to be the most important thing shaping our world over the next 5-10 years. It's going to ripple through our culture, our society, our politics. We're for people who see an enormous promise and potential in these changes, want to ride these changes instead of being ridden by them. Right now, there is no magazine that covers those kinds of issues in depth and detail. Battelle (The Industry Standard): None of these other magazines has created publishing models that are entirely devoted to serving the population of executives who are responsible for Internet business strategies. Which means that none can speak to these people directly. One point eight million people read the Wall Street Journal, so they're not exactly going to have the level of detail or analysis as we can. And News.com is News.com -- in no way does it feel like a weekly magazine. I've always married myself conceptually to the Economist -- the reason being that the Economist doesn't make any pretensions to tell you everything that happened in the news of the world, but it does make pretensions to tell you all that's happened that's important and have an informed, intelligent reportorial style that gives you a take-away. Perkins (The Red Herring): Red Herring's mission remains focused on the major trends in technology business; by technology, we have probably the broadest umbrella of industries: We look from semiconductors to digital Hollywood to enterprise software to cable and telecom. We look for the most important strategic trends -- discerning the six-month to three-year strategic direction of the biggest and most important companies in technology. If you look at the Red Herring vs. these other publications, what I would propose is that the Wireds are really out past that two-year window (it often ventures into science fiction), and on the other end of the spectrum, you have the Industry Standard, which is really a news publication looking at what happens today. The Red Herring falls between Wired and the Industry Standard. Hagerty (Fast Company): We're a different kind of business magazine. The people who read Fast Company aren't as interested in the Lou Gerstners of the world as in the other people who built IBM -- the people behind the scenes who do the day-to-day stuff. Our psychographic is interested not just in how their work lives go, but also in their personal lives -- how to balance the two. N E X T_P A G E .|. Give Bill Gates one good reason to read your rag |
A PASSEL OF NEW MAGAZINES TRIES TO