News about politics, scandals, and crime travels fast. A fine example was this week's revelation about "Deep Throat." It broke around mid-day here in the East. So while the cable-TV channels had it out there pretty quickly, I imagine millions of busy working folks learned of the Vanity Fair scoop via the Internet, where Drudge and others gave it instant headline status.
But when it comes to news about matters less thrilling -- and of lesser interest to conspiracy theorists and news zanies (you know who you are!) -- we sometimes need to be patient for word to drift out.
That's the case, almost always, with whatever happens in the magazine business. Developments there rarely have much impact on the nation's economy, let alone its psyche. Rarer still is the mag-industry story that captures the imagination of the general public. (Last example I can recall: The titanic battle between Rosie O'Donnell and the publisher Gruner + Jahr, which owned Rosie magazine. Wow, that one epic.)
Anyway, you'd be forgiven if you missed last week's announcement that German publisher Gruner + Jahr -- yep, the Rosie gang -- was abandoning the U.S. market. It's selling all of its titles here to Meredith Publishing, a traditional, old-world outfit based in the Midwest. A pretty standard deal. Except that two of the magazines G+J owned -- Fast Company and Inc. -- are valued in this transaction at zero dollars. That's right, zero.
Two glossy business magazines, once thought to be worth nearly half a billion combined, are now essentially worthless assets. (You can thank the gloomy stock market and decline in tech advertising for that.) Since Meredith Publishing has already said it will either sell or kill the two mags, it's not clear if either will make it to year-end.
Sad. Both magazines deserve better, and I hope someone will step up and buy one or both.
But I especially want to say a few words here on behalf of Fast Company, a magazine that came out of Cambridge, Massachusetts, more than a decade ago and grew like -- well, like marijuana grows in Cambridge. What a delightful mag it was.
And what a wonderful, if quiet, mag it remains. (Or at least remained until the other night. Its Web site already seems to be down, perhaps a sign that the publisher is shuttering all systems pronto. Ouch.)
For reasons I don't entirely understand, and certainly don't agree with, the New York Times' David Carr carved up Fast Company earlier this week. Carr, who once covered the magazine biz for The Times, is an unusually astute magazine sizer-upper. But in writing about the sudden apparent demise of Fast Company, he seemed to be saying that, unlike competitors Fortune and Forbes, it had lost its way. That is, it had it coming.
Fortune is a terrific magazine, lively and insider-ish and more enjoyable to read than a big ol' business magazine has a right to be. Forbes is lots less so. But Fast Company (tagline: "How smart peeople work"), under the editorship the last couple of years of John Byrne, has been like the geeky kid down the block: Not always the most neatly dressed, but impressive in quirky brainpower.
The magazine has been chock-a-block with stories no other business magazine would bother with -- pieces, mostly, about how decisions get made, and with what results. Often the stories seemed to nibble around the fringes of Big, Important Subjects. Instead of going where its competitors went, Fast Company, working no doubt with a slimmer budget, focused on peripheral stuff -- which, in my view, is often the most telling stuff.
For example, Fast Company wouldn't simply recount the entire story of how WXYZ Corp. came to market with a new line of women's hair dryers. Instead, it'd explain how a VP's secretary's experience with dryers led to a total rethinking of the product line, and how the company allowed that bottom-up brand-development to influence its broader strategy.
I don't know about you, but I love discovering how seemingly minor personal experiences affect the larger conduct of big organizations. Fast Company's editors clearly were similarly fascinated.
To its credit, it's been a business magazine that you could appreciate even if you weren't a gonzo businessperson. (Some would argue that that sensibility was more a liability than an asset, but not me.) The team behind this sometimes brilliant monthly has always understood that individuals' stupid/silly/illogical needs are what animate most business decisions, for good or bad.
Unlike Fortune, which concentrates on powerful companies and executives, Fast Company has tended to zero in on small outfits in leadership positions, or on leadership tracks, that have something to teach us. It's always been filled with cool insights about way-ahead thinking (what kind of portable music player comes next?), the brave young souls who must sell the stuff (), and the packagers who are charged with making the machinery lip-smacking great ().
The imminent passing of a bright, iconoclastic magazine doesn't compare in news value to stunning revelations about "Deep Throat" or the near-daily disclosures of duplicity and malfeasance in Washington. It's but a dust speck amid a sea of more provocative news. I understand that.
Still, for those who believe that good magazines must be treasured -- yes, even those of us who love the special qualities of the newfangled Internet -- a single magazine's failure is occasion for regret.
Let's hope this Don Quixote-ish little magazine called Fast Company finds an angel, and fast. That wouldn't necessarily constitute a grand moment for the Republic (after all, capitalism giveth and capitalism taketh away -- the loss of a single business enterprise doesn't matter much), but at least it would lend hope to mag makers everywhere who continue to stubbornly believe that excellence still matters.
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