Marion Maneker of The Big Money writes Thursday that he doesn’t think that a redesign of Fortune magazine is going to help the business glossy.
“I say this as someone who read this biweekly magazine nearly cover-to-cover. There was a time in the late 1990s when Fortune was the best magazine in America. It came about as a combination of an extraordinary moment when business was vibrant, refreshing and transformative. Under John Huey, the magazine was packed with talent and took risks of every sort.
“Today is another era. I don’t expect Fortune to be that magazine again. It couldn’t no matter how much money it had to spend. But with the little that I’ve seen of the redesign, I don’t know what it is today.”
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When a business publication starts to flounder, it adds content in three areas:
(1) 'Entrepreneurship' (that is, small business);
(2) 'Careers' (that is, people scared about job security);
(3) 'Personal finance' (that is, people scared they're behind in retirement savings).
Occasionally they will add content in the 'Gadgets' section too, when they're scrounging for any advertiser they can find and want to shift average age of their readers down a few years.
This is all a sign of failure, and is why I cancelled my Fortune subscription two years ago. It is more fluff that I can find anywhere-- and not much value to me, really, when I do find it anywhere-- and less news. Strong, successful executives on the CEO track need analysis about industry, government policy, technology, finance. Weak executives worried they might get tossed with the next layoff and end up in line at the job fair worry about starting small businesses, job security, and retirement savings.
You know when you're out at some professional networking event and some kinda needy person gloms onto you and their name tag says 'consultant'? That person cares about those three things I outlined. And while I hate to be cutthroat about it, you don't want that person to be your reader. You don't want to be the magazine that caters to him. But when you start making changes like Fortune has, that's what you're doing, and that's why the rest of us with money to spend start canceling and spend it elsewhere.