Slashdot Mirror
Red Herring Magazine Shuts Down
Makarand writes "Red Herring Magazine
is closing its doors and joining the ranks of
magazines that rode the dot-com wave and then crashed.
Red Herring's March issue delivered to subscribers two weeks ago
will be the magazine's final issue.
The technology meltdown evaporated the magazine's
advertising revenue forcing it to
lay off most of its staff and finally close doors."
Red Herring doesn't even have a story on this major news... Maybe they couldn't afford to pay anyone to update it.
It didn't start up because of the rise of the Internet, it was around much before it reached it's height.
I'll be sad to see them go - they rocked!
I thhought they were much more informative than Wired.
They were getting rather thin towards the end, though.
Survival of the fittest. IMO they blew ass.
I don't blame the Red Herring for bulking up and covering the dot-com era - everyone was taking money, and if they didn't, then Fast Company or Business 2.0 or Upside or The Standard would have. Out of all of these rags the Herring had the best commentary, often far more crtical than you would expect from a venture rag.
I hope to see Perkins and some of the other talented writers from the Herring show up in another publication soon.
had to be done
Well seeing as the media was 100% responsible for the "dot com" boom and crash all I can say is they got what they deserved.
I think what hurt them the most is that people in this post-dotcom era, would be embarrassed if they were caught reading it! It was too "1999". Having a copy of it makes the statement "I didn't know the dotcom boom was over."
Best Buy can have you arrested
They should have taken some lessons from Slate, another media/content provider who is currently struggling. Okay, they may be struggling but at least they are afloat (so far...). Perhaps RH could have offered alternative diversified content, or adopted a more aggressive (read obtrusive) advertising model. Is this just a case of there not being enough will to save it?
Yeah, but did they have a 400k/month office in downtown SF?
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
What!? I can scarcely believe that subscribers weren't waiting with bated breath for each new issue in this continuing saga of Silicon Valley VC quick-buck artists, their saucer-eyed groupies, and their knuckle-licking lapdogs. I for one read it cover-to-cover each month to glean bleeding-edge investment ideas. Now help me get this refrigerator crate out of the dumpster. The old TV box I'm living in now is getting a little flimsy from the rain.
Good riddance.
Uh... But RH isn't making money. The story is about how they are going out of business. But ABC news is still in business. Therefore you are full of stinky stuff; QED...
- -
Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
What a shocker! A magazine that primarily wrote about companies now in the scrap heap goes belly up itself. Is this really a surprise?
Download my free songs!
Ummm, no...they are to get a hint of popular sites which can't make money from ads.
:P
You REALLY think the website makes money?
Therefore you are without financial retoric.
Yo Grark
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
If you go to the Red Herringwebsite, please notice the prominent "SUBSCRIBE NOW" button on the left navigation bar.
So if you want to spend $34.95 for a dead magazine, you still can.
But hurry up, the website is supposed to close within two weeks.
Too bad!
Roland Piquepaille (Technology Trends)
Next to go - Business 2.0
Anyone want to set up a betting pool?
Yes, I know it's tough on the staff - but in reality the whole pyramid-selling scam that was the dot.com bubble is something we are well rid of.
Now, BYTE, well, that was a loss.
by way of example
-
On February 14, a Florida Appeals court ruled there is absolutely nothing illegal about lying, concealing or distorting information by a major press organization. The court reversed the $425,000 jury verdict in favor of journalist Jane Akre who charged she was pressured by Fox Television management and lawyers to air what she knew and documented to be false information. The ruling basically declares it is technically not against any law, rule, or regulation to deliberately lie or distort the news on a television broadcast.
Not that I watch all that much TV or anything."It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
There are very few geeks who want to read things on paper (bite me if you're one of the geeks who likes paper shit). And this is actually the first time I've ever heard this magazine mentioned in quite some time, you sure they're just NOW dead??
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
If you hate popups so much, you should give phoenix a try. Have not had a problem with them since I switched to it.
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/phoenix/
The technology meltdown evaporated the magazine's advertising revenue I toldya she kinnit handlit, kiptin!
I want a new world. I think this one is broken.
What we whitness with the crash of these dot.com era online journals is basically the demise to libertarian semantics and ideals in the post 9/11 world.
With terrorist attacks all over the globe most people chease to understand the "freedom for all" and "technology for everyone" slogans. Their very lifes being threatend their come back to their basic moral values represented by conservatives. It's no surprise to Bush gained so much popularity after 9/11. John Average has less and less understanding for people who just want to give money or free information to underpriviledged countries instead of exporting their moral values which made the US successful to them. So publications like Red Herring are not favored any longer by the majority of their readers. However, the core libertarian followers don't impose a decent customer base. Especially with their everything-for-free attitude. So for journals like Red Herring the market is simply evaporating which kills them in long term.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
Shut down, eh? Yeah, right--what's the real story they're trying to hide??
[hint]
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Fox claims to be totally vindicted by the court ruling.
I always suspected Fox had their heads up their asses, but know I have solid evidence.
Which of course was silly. Most of us saw it then, and everyone knows it now. New technology does make a few very rich, a few more somewhat rich, but leaves most people about the same or worse off. That is history. I think I benefitted from the bubble, but I didn't take advantage of it or treat it a genie to grant all my wishes. I worked as hard when I was doing .com work as I did when I was doing other work, and did not get paid that much more. That is the way it should be.
Of course it is important to remember that it wasn't just the technology sector that was in an unreality field. All of the Enron finances, one amoung many now defunct or troubled traditional companies, depended on the stock never falling. Many law firms are in trouble because they thought that bankruptcy practices would never again be profitable or needed. Schools districts are cutting staff or days because the tax model assumed that property values would never fall. In other words, good riddance to the media that perpetuated these myths.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I just renewed my subscription!! Anyone have an idea of what happens? Am I just out the money or what?
I didn't -hate- Red Herring, but I certainly didn't find it worth my while to read - I tried a few different articles from a few different issues over the years, and it seems clear to me Red Herring was aimed at the generally clueless spood-fed management, not the actual IT workforce. I also hold RH responsible for reinforcing some of the dumbest, most overused and misused phrases in management today, such as "synergy", "convergance", "added value", "utilize", and "leverage".
Don't forget Salon.com...
... 41 East 11th Street ... I mean really, you run a website, it could be sourced out of Arkansas and noone could tell. Rest in peace.
I browse the article lists, and I see dozens of articles critical of the current conservative administration, without the balance of supporting articles. I am not surprised that they can't get enough support from the American public to stay in business.
On top of that, God forbid that these companies move OUT of California & New York City to somewhere with affordable costs of living... kiss Gov Davis and his high taxes goodbye. Offices: San Francisco
Being the creator isn't all its stacked up be from this news release on the demise of Red Herring.
The fallout from the 2001 terrorist attacks and corporate scandals of last year compounded Red Herring's problems, said Tony Perkins, the magazine's founder and a columnist until the end.
"The Red Herring was like a small vessel trying to navigate this perfect storm," said Perkins, who got Friday's bad news when he tried to turn in his column for the April issue. "I feel like we continued to put out a great magazine, but it would have been a miracle if we had survived all this."
Hopefully the founders of Slashdot have better rapport with the owners.
Good post, wish I would've thought of it.
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
If I read another Slashdot post going something like "Yeah I knew the bubble was gonna burst all along" I'm gonna puke. I read more "New Economy" trash here than I care to recall. "It's a New Economic Model, you just don't understand. We'll all be filthy rich for sitting in our dirty socks and playing Quake all day while blowing millions in other people's money. What do YOU know?"
Pfft. I don't hear much talk about these new fangled economic models based on horse shit and hot air anymore. What's the matter? Too hard changing the world by giving away software developed on other people's dimes and other people's times without, say, a JOB?
To compare SHI(f)T to Red Herring is laughable. Red Herring was far and away a superior publication in every respect. The only comparison is that they are now both out of business.
I'm not one to be repetitive, but since you brought it up, this bears repeating:
* * *
NOTE: Posted on behalf of a Slashdot reader (but not a member).
= = =
SHI(f)T - An Inside History
SHI(f)T started out as a make-work project for idle rich kids and a tax shelter for their parents.
It began its life as a wannabe literary magazine for "young writers", accepting the rejects from respected literary magazines with a mandate to discover new writers and fiction and aiming to, "Kick in the teeth of the literary establishment." Instead the literary establishment kicked SHI(f)Ts teeth in so far that they were coming out the other end.
Meeting no financial success, after 3 issues the magazine rebranded itself "the voice of an unsettled generation," still focusing on disaffected artists under 35.
With losses mounting, a few issues later they changed the focus of the magazine to "New Media and Culture" writing about the new technology of CD-ROMs, wrapped up in Doug Coupland fever, Generation-X hype and breaking their ban on coverage of anyone over 35.
With the magazine failing in its infancy and the parents of SHI(f)T's founders no longer willing to indefinitely pour unlimited funds into the fiscal black hole the project had become, the magazine looked south and decided to again relaunch and rebrand itself as Canada's version of Wired (that's actually how they promoted it). The magazine then boosted circulation by more than 500%, losing even more money, with an eye to being acquired based on high circulation numbers. The printing spree was funded by last-ditch investments from family and government artistic grants.
The parents/investors used their business connections with entertainment lawyer Michael Levine (called the Michael Ovitz of Canada) and the president of one of Canada's oldest and largest publishers, Maclean-Hunter (which was looking for new properties aimed at young people) to engineer a minority investment stake, using Wired as a benchmark to value the magazine. Insiders reported that the magazine used false subscriber numbers that were at least double the real number to garner the deal.
A year later the deal was dead, with Maclean-Hunter ceasing support for the still-floundering magazine.
Enter white knight and multi-millionaire Richard Szalwinski, founder of digital film, video and animation software company Discreet Logic (now the Discreet division of CAD/CAM software giant Autodesk).
With money to burn and a newly acquired publishing company looking for media properties, Szalwinski bought the magazine and made the founders instant millionaires.
Internal politics went crazy and the new general manager of the magazine brought in by Szalwinski cleaned house, getting rid of the good (such as new editor Laas Turnbull) along with the bad. Among the ousted was the co-founder of the magazine.
Szalwinski lost his shirt in a disastrous attempt to launch the magazine in the USA as a Wired competitor in 1999 and by this time, freelance contributors had not been paid for months. A year later, on the brink of bankruptcy, he sold the magazine back to co-founder Andrew Heintzman who financed it slashing the already-dismal salaries of employees by as much as 1/3 and asked them to pay into an employee ownership plan to help rescue the company. Most of the young, inexperienced, idealistic staffers agreed but some who didn't were laid off or fired "with cause." This still failed to buoy the sinking magazine's fortunes.
Facing bankruptcy, the employees sold the magazine to MultiVision publishing who thought they could leverage the SHI(f)T brand to relaunch the magazine. The new SHI(f)T's redesign was unreadable and the "unified" look they created made it difficult to know what you were looking at when you flipped through it. They recently killed its columns, saying they were "too long" at 800 words, eliminating the only remaining compelling content since the columnists were knowledgeable. And now they have finally decided to put the tired publication out of its misery.
Although some truly excellent writers have come through SHI(f)T, they were great in spite of it, not because of it. The majority were simply horrid. You can find some of both varieties around Slashdot (no names). The only thing that is sad about the death of this magazine is that a number of people who depended on it for part or all of their income will now be unemployed or scrambling to find some way of making up the sudden loss of revenue.
The magazine was a horribly mismanaged ego-trip at almost every stage that could never really decide if it wanted to be an arts, entertainment or technology magazine, and was master of none of these domains. Even staffers and contributors made dismissive, derisive comments about the magazine, its direction and content throughout its life, but as long as they were being paid (and even if they were not) a paycheck is a paycheck.
It proclaimed itself as Canadian but for the majority of its life it focused on American media, entertainment products and personalities, often almost indistinguishable from private label retail catalogs that masquerade as magazines.
It was a pseudo-intellectual, vapid fanboy, hype-machine wank, that preyed on the greed and fed the egos of just about everyone they duped to invest in it.
And, as we have seen time and again, the founders are laughing all the way to the bank.
I just did and it looks very clued in. If they go, I wonder how The Register is going to survive. Whatever happened to micropayments? I would pay a quarter to get access to many sites for a day, including possibly slashdot. As long as I could really just pay a quarter and not have to subscribe.
After the last editor quit (he went to Wired, somewhat ironically) I interviewed for the job, knowing full well it was an out-of-the-frying-pan situation, but even a temporary job is still a job... Anyway, the mgmt told me, "We're looking to hire someone that will make the market say, 'Wow! Why'd they hire that person!? What's that person going to do with this ship?'" Create your own punchline.
In other news, my RH subscription doesn't expire until 2006. Who's got my check?
of Nelson on the simpsons:
HA HA
Too bad, I actually liked that magazine. Really too bad that my wife just re-upped my subscription for another year too.
Hmmm. Take money, promise something, fail to deliver and fail to return the money after it's all spent. Yep, sounds like a dot-com flame-out tactic.
They often fabricated a story, called it news, or inside reports, so as to get hits in slump periods.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
Red Herring
Help fight continental drift.
Its VERY hard for me to see how 9/11 or Enron could affect a magazine to any great degree. I guess as long as Tony doesn't have to accept any PERSONAL responsibility for the magazine's demise, then he doesn't have to do any serious soul searching about his flawed business plan. The economy was on the way down before 9/11 and Enron. Its obvious he couldn't adjust to the new circumstances.
Why not throw in "the sun was in my eyes" and "my shoes were too tight" while he's at it?
Red Herring claimed 300,000 subscribers. At $35/subscriber/year, that's $10.5 million annually., or $338,000 in annual revenue for each of its 31 employees. From subscriptions alone!
It's just amazing to me that a company couldn't successfully run on that amount of revenue.
A while ago,
Eating Well magazine got shut down because of problems with advertising revenue. This was a magazine with a fairly large loyal readership. They've started publication again, and the magazine is now entirely supported by subscriptions - there is no advertising at all. I happily pay a few dollars extra for a magazine that is 100% content (rather than 50% ads).
They're the ones who renounced the superstitious and hysterical belief in the Users, and thus were eligible to join the Elite of the MCP.
Everyone else who continued to profess this belief received the standard substandard training, which resulted in their eventual elimination in the big dotcom crash.
ASA
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
Enron caused people to distrust corporate CEO's.
Thus people were hesitant to invest in stocks.
Thus people were hesitant to invest in startups.
Thus people lost interest in a magazine primarily focused upon startup technology companies.
Thus Red Herring's circulation fell.
Thus Red Herring's financial situation deteriorated.
Thus Red Herring was forced to shut down.
Thus if you could not initially grasp these basic concepts then you probably still don't get it.
...copyright needs to be protected. Bear in mind I do not agree fully with the course of action taken by the RIAA and MPAA. Then again, I don't agree at all with the course of action the P2P networks took. Pardon the tangent.
Anyway, my point is this. Red Herring might not have had information YOU find interesting, indeed not enough people found the information interesting, but the magazine would never had existed had they simply given the content away for free, sans ads, sans dead tree versions. Their message might have gotten out but it would likely have not been as widespread and it would have likely shut down a lot sooner. Salon is learning this first hand right now as well though I certainly lay some, or perhaps much, of the blame on their wasting a lot of money needlessly.
Instead of replying with the obvious, yet ridiculous, comment of "they should have found a better sustainable business model", why don't you offer a suggestion for a better business model. For if you are wise enough to question the way things work now, you should be wise enough to offer some ideas of ways to fix things in a way that is realistic.
The editors of the Red Herring did correctly predict the collapse of the dot-com bubble. Their book, The Internet Bubble, which came out in late 1999, made it clear what was going to happen. I ran into the authors at Kepler's Books in 1999, and that's what convinced me to get out of the market, do Downside and pick losers.
The Industry Standard was also a good magazine. Upside, though, was pure hype.
Wired ought to have gone under by now, too. But they were bought by Lycos, which was bought by Terra Networks, which went down from 140 to 5 on the NASDAQ. Maybe they'll sell Wired off to Sharper Image as an additional catalog line.
Tony Perkins, the editor-in-chief of Red Herring, or I guess, it's former editor-in-chief now, posted his position and thoughts on AlwaysOn.
Cue "Twilight Zone" music...
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
Actually, I believe WiReD magazine is owned by Condé Nast...no? Same people who publish Vogue, GQ, etc.
The WiReD news portal is run by Terra Lycos...however.
-psy
Heh.
- -
Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
They sent me a free issue a while back, along with a psychedelic marketing wrapper covered with a breathless 48-point screed about "Steve Case, CEO of Apple! and Steve Jobs, CEO of AOL!". Oh dear.
But it was free, so I read a few articles: it was all the same sort of ludicrous "New Economy! Balance Sheets and ROI are things of the past! Paradigm Shift!" horseshit that Wired and a dozen others were spewing out. Straight into the bin.
They championed the undermining of American programmers by the importation of H1B foreigners.
I am glad they are gone...
Gonna get my BOFH stories from now???
"Good, bad, I'm the guy with the gun."
I don't mean to troll, but you should work on your web search skills. I found this, a newscast report from fox13 itself here, then there's a support site here... aw hell, just take a look at my page of search returns here.
RTFM; please, I beg you.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/711781.stm
They deserved to die long ago for for being utter twats trying a thing like this.
New Architect (was Web Techniques until very recently) shut down last month. Fast Company can't be far behind. Their issues are getting smaller and smaller every month.
Software sweatshops in India!
Best Buy can have you arrested
No when but if. No, wait. The other way. I saw where the staff took pay cuts to get through the quarter, and next quarter is more of the same.
That is so, so, so funny. Until I wrote this. Now it's not funny anymore.
that site has no credibility whatsoever...just look at the name!
I repeat; there was no technology meltdown.
And the words looked so cool thrown out there as the premise of the whole story, too. Shit.
immediately available profit just because a future dynamic may take away that profit.
You really think importation of imported IT labor does anything but facilitate the spread of competition?
Get your head out of the globalist propaganda being pushed on you by the media-- the media gets its money from globalist cops. Competition is GOOD for the consumer, but BAD for those who have a dominant position in supplying the product...oh, dimwit....WE, the American CITIZENS, are or *were* in that dominant position. And who are the BUYERS of that product, those who are HELPED by global competition? The globalists corps who support the media.
Dipshit...
They were just a bunch of liberal arts vampires
groping at the dot.com genitalia.
Brain?: none!
Money?: less than none!
Talent?: was already over and beyond the event
horizon before their friggin doilie wipe parents
had the nerve to do the nastie in a '66 Buick!
FU
Sorry to see that one go. I subscribed 3 or 4 years ago and it was really useful. I'd still like to find a good pub on web techiques with a mix of technical and UI stuff. (I guess I'm old school: I still prefer paper.)
--Hi. I'm in Portland and it's raining. This appears to be a permanent condition.
Several years back RH absorbed stockmaster.com, one of my favorite stock tracking and charting sites. I wonder if any of the stockmaster will rise from the ashes of RH.....
Hey, where did Jon Katz go?
If you post it, they will read.
RH was one of the worst of the bubble rags. Most of what they printed was pure fabrication. They pioneered the "art" of the false rumor to sell magazines.
I did an interview with these guys and I can say from experience that their incompetence was only matched by their arrogance.
Despite the fact we had flown in from Europe and they had asked for and booked an interview 3 weeks in advance, they left us sitting in the foyer for over an hour.
They didn't much care what we said and rattled through the whole thing in about 15 minutes. The interview never appeared. Evidently one of the writers, Lee Bruno, just needed background info for a story and we had sucker written all over us.
Good riddance. I think F**ked Company had much better news and was about 500% more accurate than RH.
Red Herring was at the end of the funding chain. All that VC money ended up on the advertising pages and Herring's most of all. If you don't believe me, check out http://www.armitstead.com/linux/RedHerring-tux.jpg
A great pity. RH gave me the inspiration (=greed) to start my own company ... and run up huge debts before selling it at a bargain basement price. VC was (and is) hard to come by in Wivenhoe, North Essex, England. Maybe if I'd started up in Cambridge, or London, the story might be different ... we'll never know, eh? Farewell RH. RIP.
MVS Air Lines:
The passengers all gather in the hangar, watching hundreds of technicians
check the flight systems on this immense, luxury aircraft. This plane has at
least 10 engines and seats over 1,000 passengers; bigger models in the fleet
can have more engines than anyone can count and fly even more passengers
than there are on Earth. It is claimed to cost less per passenger mile to
operate these humungous planes than any other aircraft ever built, unless
you personally have to pay for the ticket. All the passengers scramble
aboard, as do the 200 technicians needed to keep it from crashing. The pilot
takes his place up in the glass cockpit. He guns the engines, only to
realise that the plane is too big to get through the hangar doors.
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