Fortune Doesn't Make My List
Fortune
Poor Fortune. Other magazines (Business Week and The Economist) provide better analysis. Still others (Red Herring and Fast Company) do a better job on new economy issues. Even coverage for the glib investor is better addressed by Forbes and Smart Money.
Frankly, Fortune, a magazine that tries too hard to cover a wide swath of issues has been out-maneuvered by the niche magazines and general business magazines. With a five dollar per issue cover price that is rarely hyper-discounted as are its brethren, stale articles and ho-hum columnists prone to repeat themselves, Fortune has become a non-issue in our house.
Don't Put Too Much Weight On Those Columns
Magazines and newspapers build loyalty among their readership by offering regular columns by writers who entice through agreement, disagreement or insight. Over a year's subscription and sporadic newsstand copies before that, I have concluded that most of the regular columns appearing in Fortune are insipid, trite and generally not worth the time it takes to slog through them.
Perhaps the prime example of this dreck is Annie Fisher's Ask Annie column about workplace issues. The question selection is horrendous and virtually every issue addressed in the column could be easily answered by any organization employee talking with a trusted colleague, researching the web, or anyone with rudimentary HR knowledge.
Stewart Alsop's technology columns focusing on what hot new cellular trend he is touting likewise makes for banal reading.
Analysis Masquerading As News and Vice Versa
Despite a long and storied history, Fortune still has not decided what type of magazine it wants to be when it grows up. Supposed news features are filled with speculation, an alarming journalism trend that the magazine has plenty of company in perpetuating. Meanwhile, pieces clearly labeled as analysis are choked with analyst touts and stale news. Anyone using this analysis as the sole source of their investing research would do better simply sending money to strangers via chain letter or creating a Ponzi scheme over a backyard cookout.
What strikes me most after reading hundreds of pages of Fortune is that I haven't learned anything. The generic business news has already been covered in depth by the dailies, the web and on television. The analysis is trite and overly simplistic. Heaven help me the next time I read a Fortune article that includes this pithy transition, "Think of it like this.". Dumbing down the magazine this often makes Fortune feel like a primer rather than an educational and informative publication.
The Bottom Line, Renewal Cards and All
Much of the information contained in Fortune's print version is available online so non-subscribers won't miss much. The magazine's circulation department is not exactly winning prizes either. I received several wraps with my soon-to-be-ending subscription, and the price was not included anywhere on the renewal form. Unforgivable. Coupled with a snarky (yes, it's a word) tone to an email renewal request, and Fortune has lost any chance of ever retaining me as a subscriber.
But on a lark, I decided to see if any of the web's cut-rate subscription agencies were offering Fortune. Why not - for the right attract price, I might actually have renewed my subscription just to look at the pretty ads, but wouldn't you know that after checking five agencies, Fortune was either listed at its normal high rate or not at all.
Skip the magazine, visit the web site if you like and get your news in a timely fashion. Even the vaunted Fortune 500 can be found in numerous places. You do not need a copy in your mailbox.
Five Things To Remember From This Review
1. Fortune has weak columnists who typically offer trite, dated or boring
copy.
2. The magazine doesn't have a clear focus.
3. Discount pricing is not available from any source I can find.
4. The news articles are muddied with unlabeled analysis.
5. Most of the features and articles are available free on the web.
