Forbes in a new publishing world

Michael Wolff writes for Town & Country magazine about how the Forbes family lost control of its magazine and what will happen to it in the future.

Wolff writes, “Forbes now maintains a skeleton staff; in effect anyone can write for it, with little vetting or oversight or alignment with the brand. In some sense there is no Forbes brand anymore, at least no specific, coherent one. Almost anybody who writes for the magazine or website—PR people promoting something; consultants looking for clients; anybody selling anything, in fact; as well as oddball opinionists—can claim to have been endorsed by Forbes.

“Dvorkin, who is rail thin and has deep-set eyes that give him something of a Crypt Keeper look, recently told an audience at an event sponsored by PandoDaily, the tech news website, that traditional journalism was dead and hostile journalists should ‘get over it.’ Journalists, he said, ‘need to understand the world is changing.’

“In a way, the Forbes family has, with infinite resignation, embraced this view. During more than a decade of decline, every member of the family has accommodated himself or herself to a reduced status, each separating from the company at his or her own pace. The Forbes family presence has dwindled to little more than the name itself.

“To some extent this loss has been cushioned by Tim Forbes’s quiet realism and his methodical efforts to preserve what value he can for his family—they no longer qualify for their own 400 list, yet they’re still pretty wealthy. But their acquiescence reflects the fact that there is no one to blame, no options that might have been better pursued. No one would say that if it had been done differently the outcome would have been better. It would be hard these days to concoct a less promising notion than an independent, advertising-supported business magazine. In that light, Forbes made the best of the existential abyss.”

Read more here.