Categories: OLD Media Moves

Dvorkin on the future of Forbes

Jeff Bercovici of DailyFinance.com talked to Lewis Dvorkin, the new chief product officer at Forbes, about what is in store for the business magazine.

Bercovici writes, “The print magazine, in particular, needs to maintain the rigorous degree of editing readers expect from it, while the website can be faster and more casual. ‘They’re distinctly different products, but the voice and message are the same,’ he says. ‘It’s about championing capitalism, about investing, about wealth.’

“Dvorkin is currently at work making over both products — not just redesigning them, he says, but ‘re-architecting’ them. A key component of that effort will be taking the most important offerings of Forbes, such as its annual ‘Forbes 400’ ranking of the wealthiest Americans, and putting them at the center of the brand.

“‘The Forbes 400 comes out in September and then you don’t see it again until a year later,’ he says. ‘That franchise should be part of the magazine all the time.’ Likewise, he says, the online version of the Forbes 400 should be dynamic, updating automatically as, for instance, stock prices fluctuate. Not only is a dynamically updated page something readers will come back to time and again, he notes, it’s also scalable: Once you’ve built the first, it costs virtually nothing to build the next 399. ‘That’s what I call building inside-out,’ he says.”