New Fortune editor Murray on his challenges

New Fortune editor in chief Alan Murray writes for the Sept. 22 issue about his challenges, which he says are “making sure that Fortune’s great journalism is available to you on multiple platforms so that you get the information, analysis, and insights you need wherever, whenever, and in whatever form you choose.”

Murray writes, “As the new editor of Fortune, I’ve been entrusted with one of the world’s great media franchises. For 84 years, Fortune has chronicled the story of business. It was conceived at the end of the go-go 1920s, born into the collapse of the 1930s, matured in the postwar triumph of the global corporation, and energized by the rise of Silicon Valley. It is an iconic brand that has followed the business story wherever it goes. And we will continue to do so — even if we end up on Thiel’s seastead.

“I’m particularly excited because the businesses we cover — from the Fortune 500 to the companies that aspire to be — face three key challenges in the coming years, each of them potentially existential, and all well worthy of our journalistic efforts.

“The first is the challenge from within. Can big global companies, created to meet the organizational needs of the 20th century, remain relevant in the 21st? Nobel-­winning economist Ronald Coase told us why we needed these bureaucratic behemoths. The complications of assembling the capital and labor necessary to build railroads, telephone networks, or mass-produced automobiles were simply too great to be negotiated in open markets. Corporate bureaucracy was the necessary antidote.”

Read more here.