Partner With Us

Numerous obituaries have appeared for The Industry Standard now that it has suspended publication. The New York Times made the Standard the first entry on its editorial page on 18 August. Most editorial sentiment runs from shock to dismay.

Readers of this column know that the sudden closing did not shock me. I have noted for several years that the magazine did nothing more than shill for the IPO market and the many venture capital firms that benefited from the Internet revolution.

Wall Street and VC firms poured millions of ad dollars into The Industry Standard to ballyhoo their IPOs and newly minted venture funds; now the decline of the stock market has reduced the flow of those ad dollars to a trickle. IPOs and VC funding have become rarities.

Analyze the editorial mix of the Standard and you will find an overwhelming weighting toward profiles and absurd venture capital concepts. No serious Internet professional needed the Standard for anything more than entertainment.

The man behind all of this was new media visionary John Battelle, who prepped for his job at the Standard by overseeing the rapid decline of Wired magazine before it was sold to Conde Nast. Read what Chairman Battelle told his staff about one year ago regarding the goal and future role of the Standard: "If we had one big hairy, audacious goal, it was that as a media company we could do what Dow Jones did during the industrial revolution."

What is audacious about the statement is for Battelle to think that The Industry Standard had any chance for historical relevance. Other than a page or two of stats that could be found in every other Internet magazine and dozens of Web sites, the Standard had the basic "How I made a million" article followed by dozens of ads boasting of completed IPOs and newly raised venture capital funds.

The Standard did have some high-priced and famous journalists, but their skills at interpreting the Internet economy were only important because they were well-known. I doubt that James Fallows had one historically memorable column about the Internet and will surely move on to some other high profile magazine without missing a beat.

It has been reported that remaining staffers at the Standard had hoped that the magazine's parent IDG would continue to fund the magazine. I presume that IDG honcho Pat McGovern had had enough of big "hairy" ideas and decided that he would rather not continue to fund a reported $40 million annual loss after seeing his paper gain of the prior year evaporate as fast one could say "IDG." This would also be true of Flatiron Partners and several other VC firms (Flatiron is turning out to be a "great" judge of the media business as it is also a backer of Inside.com, Starmedia and iWon.com, which have all fallen on hard times).

Lost in the Standard obituaries is another Internet magazine craze that flowered between 1994 and 1997. During those years, about 40 different Internet magazines were created. Only three of these books remain today: Internet World, Interactive Week, and Yahoo Internet Life.

Next came the Internet or New Economy Internet magazine craze. These books focused on Internet businesses and the new economy and included, among others, The Industry Standard, Business 2.0, and Red Herring.

Business 2.0 is certain to survive now that it is part of AOL-Time Warner. Most of the other books will be die off by the end of 2002.

The Internet industry is continuing to evolve. I believe we are only at the end of the beginning of the industry. The demise of The Industry Standard is part of this evolution. Ironically, if any part of the Standard survives, it will be as a Web site that is updated daily. If so, The Industry Standard will have evolved from a traditional print magazine to a publication disseminated exclusively online. This is fitting as the Internet world is fast-changing and daily reporting is a necessity. The online model offers the most efficient distribution for a daily and might be the only route to salvaging any value from the once mighty Standard.

If I am correct, John Battelle's "one big hairy, audacious goal" might have a chance as a pure online play. It surely had no opportunity to succeed as a magazine.

*Alan Meckler is CEO of INT Media Group, parent company of atNewYork.com. His weekly column appears on Fridays. Send feedback and letters to the editor to: atNewYork@internet.com.