Categories: OLD Media Moves

Tension building at Forbes?

The New York Post’s Keith Kelly is reporting Wednesday that tensions are high at business magazine Forbes between president Jim Berrien and the venture capital investors who bought a stake in the operation last year.

Kelly wrote, “The Forbes family still controls the company and has no intention of forcing Berrien out, the spokeswoman said.

“However, that has not stopped the speculation.

“Sources have said that Berrien, who joined Forbes from American in 1999, and Roger McNamee – co-founder and managing director of Elevation Partners, whose investment team also includes U2 frontman Bono – have clashed.

“The word inside is that Berrien has instituted a very strict management structure at the company, preventing people from going around him to reach Chairman Steve Forbes, and his younger brother Timothy, who has run the family-owned company for years.

“‘He brought a lot of discipline and made it look much more like a modern publishing company, instead of a sleepy, family-run place,’ said one insider of Berrien.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.