Roger McNamee, managing director of the Menlo Park private equity firm Elevation Partners and Steve Forbes, editor-in-chief, Forbes took on the subject of managing the relationship between a print magazine and its online counterpart. Some background: Last August, Elevation became a minority shareholder in a newly formed company, Forbes Media, the publisher of Forbes magazine and Forbes.com. U2 lead singer Bono owns a minority stake in Elevation (in turn, the company itself was named after a U2 song).
Forbes compared the dynamic of running a print magazine and its online version to the relationship of film and stage plays when the former first became popular entertainment at the start of the last century. “Too many print publishers and editors just took the print articles and just threw it up on the website,” Forbes said. “Print and the web are fundamentally different. We’ve always been aware of that fact. It’s like when movies were first invented. People just filmed stage plays. But the most successful directors recognized the difference and a new medium came into being, quickly eclipsing the one that came before. A magazine and a website are profoundly different. That’s why we’ve always had different staffs, different buildings, different editors. We are doing some natural commingling, but we are not combining.”
In terms of using the web as a distinct item, Forbes said he wants the website to offer one-stop news. In particular, he would like to introduce some sort of wiki function that allows editors and users the ability to access more information than just the archives. He pointed to the site Real Clear Politics as an inspiration. “Real Clear Politics lists all the articles, editorials that I need to see. It’s there instantaneously, I don’t have to waste time searching for things—someone, an editor, who understands my needs puts it together. It’s personalized. Naturally, what people want to know changes frequently. So you want some surprises, some serendipity to a site. But it needs to relate directly to its individual readers. That’s what a news website should do.”
Related:
—Forbes Sells “Significant Minority Stake” To Elevation Partners; Could Be Up To 40% For $250M-300