Inc. and Fast Company owner: Print magazines need multi-pronged strategy

Joe Mansueto founded Morningstar Inc., the Chicago-based independent investment research company, out of his house. He said he’s always been an entrepreneur, and it’s his biggest contribution to the management team of the company.

“One of the things I’ve always enjoyed was working with a group of people to accomplish something,” he said.

Now Mansueto is the CEO of Morningstar and an investor in media companies. At the Society of American Business Editors and Writers annual conference in Chicago, he said down with Reuters Midwest bureau chief David Greising on Friday.

“To be independent, control my destiny — to me those were always very appealing,” he said.

Mansueto said even the name of Morningstar stresses the values of the company. Manseuto named the company after the last sentence of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden: “the sun is just a morning star.”

“To me it was all about independence, self-reliance and thrift,” he said. “Wherever you are in life, there is always more ahead.”

In 2005, Mansueto purchased Inc. and Fast Company, knowing that the value of the company was decreasing. He said he paid $35 million for Inc. and Fast Company, but one of the publications sold for $350 million just five years earlier.

“I certainly made the purchase with eyes wide open,” he said. “My belief is that if you can produce great content, you can make that work,” he said.

He said print magazines cannot be profitable on their own, and they need a multi-pronged strategy, including a digital component.

Mansueto also invested in the Chicago Sun-Times parent company, which he said wants to make aggressive moves into the digital world.

“It’s feisty, it’s scrappy, and it’s trying to break stories,” he said. “I think down the line Chicago will be a one newspaper town.”

Looking toward the future, Mansueto said Morningstar and media companies should focus on design, looking to sites such as Pinterest and Instagram.

“It’s not the premise of those sites, it’s not the business plan,” he said. “It’s the design of those sights and how you engage and distribute that content.”

Claire Williams is a senior at the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Journalism and Mass Communication.