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.
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.
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.
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)
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"
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.
Shut down, eh? Yeah, right--what's the real story they're trying to hide??
[hint]
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
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
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.
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?
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
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.