Geek tragedy

Washington Monthly, Jan-Feb, 2003 by Jamie Malanowski

Of course, had he reported the story, his closeness might have been a problem. Ledbetter is a True Believer. He thinks The Industry Standard was a great little publication that could and should have been saved, and would have been saved if the bean counters at IDG hadn't hewn to their own agendas. At one point, he makes a harsh admission: Of the 170,000 readers the publication had in May 2000, only 44 percent actually paid for the magazine. The rest got theirs through "controlled circulation," a laughable euphemism for "for free." By 2001, those who were paying were declining to renew "in droves," as even Ledbetter puts it. In other words, The Industry Standard, as an idea, as the Bible of the New Media World Order, as the future Dow Jones, was the greatest thing since sliced bread. But at rock bottom, the thing that it really was--a magazine--simply wasn't popular enough to live. In that way, it was like so many of the businesses it covered.

Under all the money that washed over them, these things that were supposed to be agents of transformation were just businesses, tethered to the immutable laws of supply and demand. And at rock bottom, this book, which is supposed to be a yarn about a publications rise and fall, is really about one man's disappointment that this thing he loved so much turned out so poorly. So what?

JAMIE MALANOWSKI is a New York writer.