Lisa O’Carroll and Mark Tran
The Industry Standard, the magazine that came to symbolise the dot.com boom, has closed after falling victim to the Internet collapse.
It will file for bankruptcy unless a last-minute buyer can be found.
Its collapse symbolises the dashing of yet another dot.com dream for San Francisco’s digerati, who enjoyed legendary rooftop parties at the magazine’s headquarters to celebrate the thriving Internet economy.
But, like the industry it was set up to chronicle, the magazine has struggled in the declining advertising market and officially suspended publication with all but 15 of the 180 staff being laid off.
In a statement, Alissa Neil, a representative for the magazine, said: “The Standard will be suspending publication of its weekly print magazine, The Industry Standard, while the company continues to look for a buyer.
“It is quite possible that, during that time, we will file chapter 11 [for bankruptcy].
“We’re very disappointed our short-term financial situation requires this, but we remain hopeful our assets will be sold.”
The weekly magazine that chronicled the dot.com revolution, rose astonishingly fast, but its demise was even speedier.
Only a year ago the magazine was flourishing. Based in San Francisco, it employed 400 people, including 130 journalists. Advertisements were flowing in so thick and fast that, at times, the magazine looked like a small telephone directory.
Last year, advertising brought in $140-million, enabling it to make a profit three years after it was founded, a rarity in the magazine business.
Of all the publications that mushroomed to cover the Internet boom, The Industry Standard set, well, the standard. It was no mere booster of the Internet sector, but carried plenty of critical coverage of the companies and executives it followed.
Only a few months ago, it won a Gerald Loeb award, the highest prize in financial journalism. Widely respected by journalists and the industry, its conferences attracted big names from the Internet world. Less than a month ago, it sponsored a conference in Carlsbad, California, attended by Steven Ballmer of Microsoft and Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems.
But for a publication that examined the warts and all of the dot.com sector, The Industry Standard failed to rein in its own excesses. In 1999 it sponsored a conference in Barcelona where more than $1,4-million was spent on one party alone.
The company assumed all the trappings of a corporate high-flyer, signing leases for office space for up to 600 employees in San Francisco and New York, with some leases negotiated to last as long as 10 years.
Such largesse was fine when the dot.com sector was flourishing, but not when the hi-tech bubble burst March last year.
The advertising slump hit everybody hard, with ad pages slowing to a trickle. This is true not just at The Industry Standard, but also its rivals, including Red Herring, Fast Company and Business 2.0. In a sign of hard times, The Industry Standard earlier this year closed the United Kingdom-based Industry Standard Europe, after it had been in existence for only a few months.
As revenues plummeted, the magazine’s backers had second thoughts.
International Data Group (IDG), a trade magazine publisher in Boston and shareholder in The Industry Standard, disliked the direction in which the company was going, in particular its independence and its desire to become a public company.
Besides, The Industry Standard was an uncomfortable fit with IDG’s other profitable but less glamorous titles, such as PC World and InfoWorld.
According to US media reports, IDG refused to seek or provide a bridge loan of about $10m, effectively pulling the plug on the magazine.
The magazine’s website, www.thes tandard.com, is expected to continue in the immediate future. It will operate with only a skeleton crew of journalists and technicians.
The demise of The Industry Standard underlines the extent to which the new economy magazine still relied on old economy means of advertising to survive and how the lack of sound management to control costs can kill a product.