Forbes is an American business magazine owned by Forbes, Inc. Published biweekly, it features
original articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. Forbes also reports
on related subjects such as technology, communications, science, and law. Its headquarters are in
New York City. Primary competitors in the national business magazine category are Fortune
and Bloomberg Businessweek. The magazine is well known for its lists and rankings, including
its lists of the richest Americans and rankings of world's top companies. The motto of Forbes
magazine is "The Capitalist Tool". Its Chairman and editor-in-chief is Steve Forbes, and its
CEO is Mike Perlis.
Company history B. C. Forbes, a financial columnist for the
Hearst papers, and his partner Walter Drey, the general manager of the Magazine of Wall
Street, founded Forbes magazine in 1917. Forbes provided the money and the name and Drey provided
the publishing expertise. The original name of the magazine was Forbes: Devoted to Doers
and Doings. Drey became vice-president of the B.C. Forbes Publishing Company, while
B.C. Forbes became editor-in-chief, a post he held until his death in 1954. B.C. Forbes
was assisted in his later years by his two eldest sons, Bruce Charles Forbes and Malcolm
Stevenson Forbes. Bruce Forbes took over on his father's death,
and his strengths lay in streamlining operations and developing marketing. During his tenure,
1954–1964, the magazine's circulation nearly doubled.
On Malcolm's death, his eldest son Malcolm Stevenson "Steve" Forbes Jr. became President
and Chief Executive of Forbes and Editor-in-Chief of Forbes magazine. Between 1961 and 1999
the magazine was edited by James Michaels. In 1993, under Michaels, Forbes was a finalist
for the National Magazine Award. In 2006, an investment group Elevation Partners that
includes rock star Bono bought a minority interest in the company. A 2009 New York Times
report said: "40 percent of the enterprise was sold ... for a reported $300 million,
setting the value of the enterprise at $750 million. According to Mark M. Edmiston of AdMedia Partners,
'It’s probably not worth half of that now.'" In November 2013, Forbes Media, which publishes
Forbes magazine, was put up for sale.
Sales documents prepared by Deutsche Bank revealed that while Forbes is seeking price
of over $400M, the 2012 EBITDA was only $15M. Forbes sold a majority of itself to Asian
investor group Integrated Whale Media Investments in July of 2014.
Sale of headquarters and relocation to Jersey City
In January 2010, Forbes reached an agreement to sell its headquarters building located
on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan to New York University. Terms of the deal were not publicly reported,
but Forbes will continue to occupy the space under a five-year sale-leaseback arrangement.
The headquarters will move to the Newport section of Jersey City in 2014.
Other publications Apart from Forbes and its lifestyle supplement,
Forbes Life, other titles include Forbes Asia and fifteen local language editions. Steve
Forbes and his magazine's writers offer investment advice on the weekly Fox TV show Forbes on
Fox and on Forbes On Radio. Other company groups include Forbes Conference Group, Forbes
Investment Advisory Group and Forbes Custom Media. From the 2009 Times report: "Steve
Forbes recently returned from opening up a Forbes magazine in India, bringing the number
of foreign editions to 10." In addition, that year the company began publishing ForbesWoman,
a quarterly magazine published by Steve Forbes' daughter, Moira Forbes, with a companion Web
site. The company formerly published American Legacy
magazine as a joint venture, although that magazine separated from Forbes as of May 14,
2007. The company also formerly published American
Heritage and Invention & Technology magazines. After failing to find a buyer, Forbes suspended
publication of these two magazines as of May 17, 2007. Both magazines have since been purchased
by the American Heritage Publishing Company, and have resumed publication as of Spring
2008. Forbes has published the Forbes Travel Guide
since 2009. On January 6, 2014, Forbes Magazine announced
that, in partnership with app creator Maz, it was launching a social networking app called
“Stream”. Stream allows Forbes readers to save and share visual content with other
readers and discover content from Forbes magazine and Forbes.com within the app.
Forbes.com Forbes named magazine artist Kyle Reeves as
Vice President to David Churbuck. David founded Forbes' Web site in 1996. The site uncovered
Stephen Glass' journalistic fraud in The New Republic in 1998, an article that drew attention
to internet journalism. At the peak of media coverage of alleged Toyota sudden unintended
acceleration in 2010 it exposed the California "runaway Prius" as a hoax, as well as running
five other articles by Michael Fumento challenging the entire media premise of Toyotas suddenly
gone bad. The site, like the magazine, publishes many lists focusing on billionaires and their
possessions, especially expensive homes, a critical aspect of the website's apparent
popularity. Forbes.com employs the slogan "Home Page For The World's Business Leaders"
and sometimes claims to be the world's most widely visited business web site.
The company's current chief executive officer is Mike Perlis; the current chief product
officer is Lewis D'vorkin; the current editor of the magazine is Randall Lane.
Forbes.com also publishes subscription investment newsletters, and an online guide to web sites,
Best of the Web. Forbes.com is part of Forbes Digital, a division
of Forbes Media LLC. Forbes' holdings include a portion of RealClearPolitics. Together these
sites reach more than 27 million unique visitors each month.
The 2009 Times report said that, while "one of the top five financial sites by traffic
[throwing] off an estimated $70 million to $80 million a year in revenue, [it] never
yielded the hoped-for public offering". Forbes currently allows advertisers to publish
blog posts on its website alongside regular editorial content through a program called
AdVoice, which accounts for more than 10 percent its digital revenue. The website also uses
a "contributor model" in which a wide network of "contributors" writes and publishes articles
directly on the website. Contributors are paid based on traffic to their Forbes.com
pages; the site has received contributions from over 2,500 individuals, and some contributors
have earned over US$100,000, according to the company.
References
Further reading Forbes, Malcolm S. Fact and Comment Knopf,
New York, ISBN 0-394-49187-4; twenty-five years of the editor's columns from Forbes
Grunwald, Edgar A. The Business Press Editor New York University Press, New York, ISBN
0-8147-3016-7 Holliday, Karen KahlerA Content Analysis of
Business Week, Forbes and Fortune from 1966–1986 Masters of Journalism thesis from Louisiana
State University, Baton Rouge, 69 pages, OCLC 18772376, available on microfilm
Kohlmeier, Louis M.; Udell, Jon G. and Anderson, Laird B. Reporting on Business and the Economy
Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, ISBN 0-13-773879-X
Kurtz, Howard The Fortune Tellers: Inside Wall Street’s Game of Money, Media, and
Manipulation Free Press, New York, ISBN 0-684-86879-2 Pinkerson, Stewart. The Fall of the House
of Forbes: The Inside Story of the Collapse of a Media Empire. New York: St. Martin's
Press. ISBN 0312658591. Tebbel, John William and Zuckerman, Mary Ellen
The Magazine in America, 1741–1990 Oxford University Press, New York, ISBN 0-19-505127-0
Parsons, D. W. The Power of the Financial Press: Journalism and Economic Opinion in
Britain and America Rutgers University Press, New Jersey, ISBN 0-8135-1497-5
External links Official website