The Red Herring is no longer. As one of the hot Silicon Valley magazines that covered the New Economy and rode the wave of prosperity, it is joining Upside and The Industry Standard in the dead pool. Read about it here on SFGate: Red Herring sinks / Business magazine unable to secure enough ads.
It’s easy to make fun of the boom times now, but I sure enjoyed flipping through these magazines. I was disappointed, but not too surprised when The Industry Standard vanished, but the Herring has been around for ten years and I assumed their pedigree was distinguished enough to weather the storm. Any bets on how much longer Business 2.0 or Fast Company can last?
Not to worry, though. There’ll be a new crop of tech business magazines when the money comes back. They’re like mosquitoes. They all go hide somewhere, but come the first warm day: WHAMMO! they’re buzzing around in your face again. It’s amazing how fast they can breed. In the meantime, consider this Ghost of the Ad Revenues of Christmas Past from Marketplace for August 17, 2001
At the height of the high-tech boom, an issue of The Industry Standard magazine was almost as thick as the “M” encyclopedia, 380 pages, mostly advertisements for cutting edge companies. But as the tech bubble burst, so did that section of the ad market and the Industry Standard’s last issue was just 70 pages long.
Even in a recession, though, wedding magazines remain thick enough to prop open doors. Modern Bride is a brick of nearly 500 pages (“25 things you must have in your kitchen” is on page 434 of the May issue). Makes you wonder if a merger could have saved the day for the Herring. Still, Red Herring Bridal seems unlikely to appeal.
Rambles Blog at Star Chamber 