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

Scooped on their own closing...

[Anonymous Coward]

Red Herring doesn't even have a story on this major news... Maybe they couldn't afford to pay anyone to update it.

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.

RH wasn't a bad magazine...

[callipygian-showsyst]

..I used to enjoy reading it.

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."

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?

re: Red Herring shuts down

[Reservoir Penguin]

Yeah, but did they have a 400k/month office in downtown SF?

I can't believe it

[evocate]

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.

You can still subscribe to Red Herring

[rpiquepa]

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)

Ach!

[Fjornir]

The technology meltdown evaporated the magazine's advertising revenue I toldya she kinnit handlit, kiptin!

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.

I interviewed there...

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

When will people stop with the "9/11 excuse"?

[canter]

"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."

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?

This is a loss. The Red Herring was useful.

[Animats]

The Red Herring was originally a trade magazine for people involved with the Silicon Valley venture capital community. Turning it into a mainstream publication with wide distribution was typical dot-com hubris.

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.