OLD Media Moves

The unified Forbes newsroom

January 14, 2009

Forbes editors William Baldwin and Paul Maidment write about the combining of the business magazine’s print and online staffs into one unit.

Baldwin and Maidment write, “It may be in text, video, still images, audio, numerical data or combinations thereof, in whatever format is appropriate. But the very best of it–the content that will provide the highest value to readers–will share one set of distinctive common editorial values and one set of common editorial standards. We want those to be Forbes editorial values. In short, to stand McLuhan on his head, it is the message not the medium.

“We are now organizing our editorial resources to deliver on that promise, so we can serve our readers in the best way possible as our industry goes through a wrenching transformation of new business models, technologies, trade craft, competitors and audience, all compounded by a global economic slowdown.

“We’ll still be producing magazines, Web sites, video programs, newsletters, events and the myriad other things we do, but from a common pool of editorial staff professionally adept in any medium and united behind one of the most powerful brands in business journalism.

“It will mean new jobs and new ways of doing things in a new media world. Some of it will look familiar, much of it less so. Some of it will be uncomfortable at first. We are pioneers, and we’ll be making some of it up as we go along. We will be giving more responsibility to a larger group of senior editors for developing distinctive Forbes content, and holding them more accountable for it.”

Read more here.

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