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."

Comments

Tony Perkins was spot-on

[Ars-Fartsica]

Not all of the staff of Red Herring were dot-com pumpers. Tony Perkins was way ahead of the crowd with very harsh and insightful criticism of the dot-com bubble. His book on the subject is still worth reading, and if you read it and acted on it when it was published you would have escaped with your money intact.

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.

No lessons from Slate?

[megazoid81]

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?

perpetuating myths

[fermion]

I never understood these magazines like Red Herring, Wired and the like(not to mention forbes, et al). I bought a few copies over the years, just for grins, but never saw what the fuss was about. The main points seemed to be that the world had changed, past models were no longer valid, and everyone could be rich without doing much work.

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.