Yet More about Forbes' James Michaels

The Wall St. Journal also ran an interesting obit on former Forbes editor James Michaels, available at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119163606766351063.html. And the Times' Sunday Business section published a column by Gretchen Morgenson entitled, "A Taskmaster Who Changed Business News" (available at www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/business/media/07gret.html).

According to the Journal,

• "As editor of Forbes for nearly four decades, James W. Michaels favored notes short and acerbic: 'This is stenography,' he often wrote of copy that lacked point of view.
• "'It was entirely Michaels's magazine and his vision and style,' says Rick Edmonds, a media business analyst at the Poynter Institute. While Fortune was known for longer articles and Business Week for a survey of the week's news, Forbes specialized in 'having a fresh take and holding businesses accountable from a small-investor viewpoint,' Mr. Edmonds says, adding that a marker of Mr. Michaels's strength is that 'the magazine is not especially different from what it was when he was editor.'"
• "One thing he taught was to buck conventional wisdom...'It is always safe to take counter-cyclical positions in a cyclical world,' Mr. Michaels told Ad Week in 1985."

It's worth repeating two items in that paragraph:

1. "While Fortune was known for longer articles and Business Week for a survey of the week's news, Forbes specialized in 'having a fresh take and holding businesses accountable from a small-investor viewpoint.'"
2. "The magazine is not especially different from what it was when he was editor.'"

According to Morgenson's "Forbes as the Abuse File," Michaels would say:

• “This is badly written and badly edited. It would be an insult to foist it on the reader.”
• “This is a real snoozer, lacking in specifics. Why not just send them a nice lacy valentine and forget the prose.”
• “I’m sending this one back because the character is deader than a dodo.” Can’t the writer “inject a little life without adding 10,000 words?”
• “A good story turned into oatmeal by bad organization.”
• “Please fix this quickest. It lacks most of the ingredients of a Forbes story. The quotes are room emptiers.”
• “This is the kind of sentence that drives readers to stop reading.”
• “This is a paid advertisement. Did you forget to say he walks on water?”
• “If I can’t stay awake editing this, how can a reader stay awake reading it? What’s the point? If it has a point, maybe we can make a story of it.”
• “I can’t make head nor tail of this. There’s a story buried in all this confusion, but I can’t find it. Fix it or kill it.”
• “This is a remarkable job of interviewing an interesting and colorful man and getting precisely one quote.”
• “This is exactly the sort of lazy writer jargon that will put us out of business. Please use the rich resources of the English language.”
• “Too bloody complicated. That’s not writing. Make it simple and interesting. That’s writing.”
• “This is so full of holes, it’s like Swiss cheese.”
• “Here’s another one I can’t understand without help from a lawyer and accountant.”
• “This is more an essay as written than a Forbes article. It badly needs the concrete images, the real people that will anchor it to reality. It’s called shoe-leather reporting.”

"He regularly banned words and phrases he considered overused. 'Fast track,' 'game plan,' 'bottom line' and 'superstar' were some examples. 'Upscale' was another: 'If I see this word again I’ll upthrow,' he wrote.

Update on when a link is not a link

So I asked BusinessWire about these virtual links -- for example, they've got Forbes.com in the URL, but you can't find them when searching Google or using the Forbes.com search bar.

The response makes some sense but is not completely satisfying: "Business Wire posts a release to over 3500 web portals and databases. If someone signs up for an RSS feed or email alert through on of these sites, your clients release will be pushed to them if your clients release fits the users criteria. This is another great way to reach more people.

"The NewsTrak Posting report that you receive is intended to provide a quick snapshot of your release as available on key portals and news sites.

"In regards to Forbes.com, your release did post to Forbes even though it is not searchable. Public company releases are searchable. "

I guess that means we should have more public companies as clients.

I don't like October

Some people don't like Mondays, but I don't like October. It has nothing to do with the start of another Supreme Court session. Or with the start of baseball post-season -- as a Red Sox fan, things are looking good this year. (But as a lifelong Mets fan, well, sigh, that's another story.)

I don't like October because for the past 26 years, Forbes magazine has published its list of the 400 richest Americans.

And, just like the past 26 years, I didn't make the list.

This year, it took $1.3 billion to make the list, up $300 million from the previous year.

I'm not good at math, but by my calculations, I was just $1.4 billion away from the list. If only I had insisted in getting paid in Canadian dollars...I would've been just $1.3 billion short.

I know I shouldn't feel so bad. There are 82 billionaires who didn't have enough to make the list this year along with 57 slackers who had appeared on last year's list but didn't make it this year.

I wonder if they throw you out of the billionaires' country club if you don't make the list. Or perhaps the others on the list make a show of signing for your bar bill since you've hit tough times.

Then there are the billionaires who lost a ton of money. One guy lost $1.5 billion last year -- which provides some context to the Mets' season.

Interestingly, while consistently I have not made the list, there are 32 billionaires who have made the list every year since 1982. Some are worth approximately the same amount back then as now. I feel badly for them, too. Sure $2 billion was a lot of money in 1982, but it's worth a lot less in 2007.

Kirk Kirkorian can be an inspiration for us. At 79, he earned $9 billion last year -- on top of his other billions, but still. Perhaps when I get to his age, I can have a $9 billion year. Of course, by then, given inflation, the $9 billion might be just enough to pay for private college tuition for a year.

A lot of the Forbes 400 made their money through inheritance. I don't blame my parents. I blame my grandparents. (All I got from one grandfather was my first name.) When I called my parents this week to complain about their parents, I actually got a lot of support.

Others made it on the list through inventing. I can kick myself because I came up with a concept years ahead of its time. I vividly remember watching on TV the splashdown landing of one of the Apollo rockets. My parents weren't around but I thought they'd be interested in the news, so I decided to tape it for them. I brought over my parents' portable wheel-to-wheel machine and held up the microphone to the set's tiny speaker in order to capture the news report. (By the way, I believe my parents still own that wheel-to-wheel recorder.)

In those days, each rocket launch was followed very closely by television news. And those days, we only had three network channels, plus two independent stations and PBS. I remember developing a vision for the future of television, and thinking one day there would be 11 channels on a kind of information highway -- I remember distinctly the number 11 since I think that was how high I could count at the time.

If only I had pursued my vision for a video recorder and expanded choice of programming....I could have made it onto the Forbes 400.

The late James Michaels, and his impact as longtime editor at Forbes

Today's New York Times contained an obit of James Michaels, a longtime Forbes editor.

The article, available at www.nytimes.com/2007/10/04/business/04michaels.html, contained some interesting observations about how Michaels reshaped Forbes' editorial voice. And while I had heard many of them (and more), I think it's worthwhile to hear them again because Michaels' philosophy is ingrained in the Forbes culture.

• He made Forbes opinionated, interpretive and often indecorous, a magazine that was staunchly pro-business (and, its critics said, pro-wealthy) but did not hesitate to skewer companies and executives it saw as failures.
• He often refused to permit articles on topics that other publications had covered, no matter how appealing or important, insisting that his staff find good stories ahead of the competition.
• He strove to make articles shorter and more blunt, with a more clearly stated point of view.
• He belittled the “on the other hand” kind of balance so many publications strive for as mere wishy-washiness.
• Former reporters and editors recall weekly story meetings as a trial by fire, when anyone with a proposal had to be ready to fend off a barrage of harsh questions from the editor.

"Mr. Michaels embraced a rough image of the magazine, and himself. When an editor of the rival Fortune magazine was quoted as saying of Forbes, 'They’re nasty, venal people,' Mr. Michaels pinned the quotation to his office wall, and said, 'I just thought it was terrific.'”

The difference between Forbes & Fortune

Each magazine works hard to develop its own personality, to provide information and perspective differently from its competitors.

While Forbes and Fortune have a similar 26-issue publishing schedule and both tend to cover large companies (while devoting one issue per year on small businesses), there are some significant differences.

First, let me say, both publications are terrific, interesting, and are very good at understanding what their advertisers and readers want.

But even given that readers of both magazines have a high net worth, their approach to the same news and the same demographic is quite different.

And I'm not talking about the fact that Forbes does not refer to the group of 500 large corporations as the "Fortune 500." (The same is true of BusinessWeek, by the way, which refers to the BusinessWeek 1000.)

Let's look at the cover stories of both magazines that appeared the same time.

Forbes published its 26th annual list of the richest 400 Americans, known as the Forbes 400. This issue is devoted to the unimaginable wealthy, how they earned it and how they spend it, and claims an accuracy within $100 million. (Apparently my net worth is not even a rounding error.)

On the other hand, Fortune's cover story is devoted to "How to be a great leader." To be fair to Forbes, Fortune cover story from the previous issue was "The business of luxury," filled with items only the super-rich can afford.

In pitching Forbes, the undercurrent is how to get rich.

In pitching Fortune, the undercurrent is how to be a better manager.

This is not a judgment of their editorial missions or approaches. It's just that from a PR perspective, it's important to understand the difference.

By the way, BusinessWeek is totally different. BusinessWeek covers news more closely than either Forbes or Fortune (since BusinessWeek publishes 50 times a year, nearly twice Forbes & Fortune). BusinessWeek is far less likely to devote itself entirely to luxury topics; it's a more serious read than its two competitors. (For example, Fortune runs the humorous Stanley Bing column at the back page of each issue, while Forbes ran a Chris Buckley-written multi-page humorous look at billionaires through the ages going back to the Biblical era. I'm a Chris Buckley fan, but BusinessWeek would never run something so frivolous.)

When is a link not a link?

A big question these days is about press release-pick up.

There are lots of spam sites that pick up parts of press releases in the hopes that web surfers (do people still use that term) who land on the page may decide to click onto one of the ads on the side of the page. If even is a small percentage of people landing on the page click on an ad, the site pays for itself.

But from a client and agency perspective, these sites are meaningless. I've discussed this before, but those sites draw random people, not potential customers for our B2B clients.

On the other hand, there are media sites that regularly pick up press releases. Media sites that range from smaller TV stations around the country to publications like Forbes. Recently, we distributed two press releases over PR Newswire for the same client; the report we got back included pickup on the Forbes site. The client was thrilled, as we've seen with other clients.

But we decided to investigate further. Going to the Forbes.com site, we entered the client's name in the search box....

The result: nothing.

No link to the client's press release, even though we had a Forbes.com URL that showed the release. In other words, the pick-up existed outside Forbes.com's search engine, and could be located only by clicking on the link provided by PR Newswire.

We are now advising clients not to get too impressed by the Forbes.com pickup of the release. Not to pick on PR Newswire or Forbes.com, I'd bet the same is true for BusinessWire, too.

One measure of a successful press release is the number of stories generated by them. But these days of smaller editorial staffs, just getting a press release picked up on relevant, meaningful, non-spam sites can be a measure of success.

Unfortunately, that doesn't mean the press release has real impact.

Bottom-line: The industry needs a better way to measure the impact of a press release.

More about Magazines

The New York Times ran an interesting interview with George Green, the chief executive of Hearst Magazines International, which sells foreign versions of Cosmopolitan, Esquire and other Hearst publications. In the interview, Green says, "The economics are hugely different (inside the U.S. and outside). The United States is the only place where the postal service gives incentives for mailing magazines. So here, about 90 percent of magazines are sold by subscription, only 10 percent on newsstands. Outside the United States, that’s reversed. And no one overseas expects a huge discount from the cover price when they do subscribe. The business is driven entirely by ad revenue here, but elsewhere it is driven by circulation as well as ads."

In other countries, magazines are sold at newsstands, which affects the way Hearst designs its magazines and how it sells advertising in them.

According to Green, they use much heavier paper. "Since we don’t mail many magazines, we don’t have to worry about postal weight, and the heavier paper gives a higher-quality look on the newsstand. You hardly ever see newsstands in the United States anymore, but overseas you see them everywhere. The concept of a rate base — promising advertisers a certain level of readers — doesn’t exist in other countries. So you don’t have to spend a lot of money on promoting your new magazine to lots of readers. It can take more than three years for a new magazine to break even in the United States. Overseas, you can make money with your second issue"

One interesting concept of reselling/republishing U.S. magazines, content, and format to readers in other countries. Hearst doesn't just translate U.S. content into the local language. "We make the American content available, but it’s up to our partners whether to use it or not. At first they use lots of it, but over time it goes down to about 20 percent. After all, the women of Australia are not like the women of Korea, who are not like the women of France," Green said.

From a global messaging perspective, what's also interesting is that Hearst does not offer package deals, offering space in five countries for the price of four.

"We rarely bundle," Green said. "Media buyers tend to operate locally, with localized budgets. It’s rare that someone in Korea is buying ad space in Latvia."

That's important because often U.S. advertising and PR clients think it should take one budget to cover Europe. There are some pan-European publications -- the International Herald Tribune (which caters to Americans), The Economist, The Financial Times and The Wall St. Journal Europe are the main English-language exceptions. But generally, "covering" Europe requires translating messages into the local language and culture, and having people on the ground in each country. That often requires separate budgets for each country and plans customized for each country.

The full interview is available here.