What Happened to the Class of '99?

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Nov 1, 2003

Byline: Ken Gordon

Don't know about you, but Red Herring's surprise resuscitation made us nostalgic for the days when everyone was partying like it was, well, 1999. Remember the foosball table! The venture capital! The ad budgets! It also made us wonder what happened to avatars of tech-biz publishing: Were they lost in cyberspace or what? Turns out, they're still around. So get ready for quick career updates - it's reunion time.

Name: Jim Aley

Claim to New Economy Fame: Former managing editor of Business 2.0

Current Gig: Did someone say, "Return of the prodigal son?" If not, someone should: Jim Aley has returned to Fortune, where he worked as both an editor and reporter, from 1992 until 1999. "I miss the crew at Business 2.0, and the excitement of launching a magazine," he says. "But it's great to be back working at a magazine with a much broader scope." Aley, who now holds the title assistant managing editor, likens the depth of Fortune's talent to that of the New York Yankees: "There are three people who can play any position."

Name: John Battelle

Claim to New Economy Fame: Co-founder of Wired and founder and former chair of Standard Media International (publisher of The Industry Standard)

Current Gig: That's Professor Battelle to you! The West Coast magazine whiz now calls UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism - where he directs the Business Reporting Program - home. Of course, he has a pretty good office-campus job: writing a column for Business 2.0.

Name: Jim Daly

Claim to New Economy Fame: Founder of Business 2.0

Current Gig: Nowadays, Jim Daly is online, running the virtual version of Red Herring. The company that caused this tech-pub renaissance is Dasar, the French IT concern responsible for the annual ETRE conference. Dasar purchased the rights to the name "Red Herring" back in March. Comment dit-on, "dot-com"?

Name: Jason Pontin

Claim to New Economy Fame: Former editor of Red Herring

Current Gig: Can a Red Herring change his stripes? We say: Why not! Pontin now edits Acumen Journal of Sciences, a publication that focuses on the business end of the life-sciences game. In the launch issue, Pontin writes that he was "unhappy about the speculative mania that characterized the last years of the communications and computing boom and numbed by the utter ruin of all the companies we had written about."

Name: Alan Webber

Claim to New Economy Fame: Founding editor of Fast Company

Current Gig: Webber has lately been moving in somewhat slower circles. The man who was the IT kid of business editors, and whose mag won an Ellie for General Excellence in 1999, is now working on a very different sort of media project: short stories. "Could be my next career will be as a writer of fiction."