A Herring from the Ashes
THE RETURN OF RED HERRING, the magazine, appears to be another step closer to reality.
"We are on the verge of starting the magazine" sometime "around October," Publisher Alex Vieux told Barron's in an interview. Vieux is the French-born chairman and chief executive of Dasar Inc., a media and conference company based in Mountain View, Calif., with offices in Paris.
The revival of the fabled journal is another clear sign that venture-capital investment is off the bottom and gaining momentum. During the bubble years Red Herring was a must-read for venture capitalists and budding entrepreneurs, but, like so many other tech mags, it vanished along with the market caps of all those dot-coms. Now, like venture-capital firms themselves, the magazine is aiming for a more sober, hard-headed tone, and it plans to look well beyond Silicon Valley for stories.
An investor group led by Vieux and including former Yahoo! CEO Tim Koogle acquired the rights to the Red Herring brand and other assets in April 2003 from co-founder Tony Perkins and other backers, for an undisclosed sum. Perkins went on to found AlwaysOn, a Weblog media company (and is hosting a tech conference at Stanford University next week).
An October relaunch for the publication would be consistent with terms of the deal to acquire the brand, which reportedly included an 18-month noncompete clause for starting another dead-tree publication by the same name. Time Warner, which publishes Fortune and Business 2.0 magazines, bought the Herring's subscription lists. Vieux has been operating a free online Red Herring site since September, which he says has already published more than 400 articles.
Details of the reincarnation remain sketchy. A Red Herring representative indicated to Barron's that the magazine would be a weekly, but Vieux would not confirm that in a later conversation.
"We'll see. There is a probability that it will be a weekly," he said, but he added: "Nothing is kept in stone."
Vieux, 47, has a long and diverse resumé, which includes a stint as U.S.-based business correspondent for the French daily Le Monde, covering Silicon Valley. That experience seems the most relevant to his latest publishing venture, but he has also been a software entrepreneur, college professor and adviser to the French government.
He sat on the board of Tandem Computers for two years before it was acquired by Compaq Computers (now part of Hewlett-Packard) in 1997. He still sits on various boards, including that of Check Point Software Technologies. He spearheads two of the better-known technology roundtables in Europe and Asia through his Dasar firm. He holds a law degree from Universite de Paris and an MBA from Stanford.
And now he adds publisher of the reborn Red Herring to that list. A company flier distributed at a technology conference in Santa Clara, Calif., last week boasted that the magazine "returns this fall" and was seeking new subscribers at $48 a year. Asked how he could expect readers to subscribe without knowing whether the magazine was going to be weekly or monthly, Vieux says: "That's a good question."
That's not the only good question. The distribution hurdles and production costs for a weekly are generally much steeper than for a monthly start-up. Vieux would not disclose how much cash he has raised. So far, the publisher only has 10 editorial employees in place. During its salad days, the Herring's payroll topped 400 employees. And most important, he has no chief editor.
During little more than a year of planning the relaunch and running the Website, Vieux has burned through three top editors with strong pedigrees. Richard Brandt, formerly of Business Week, lasted several months. James Daly, who was editor of Business 2.0, was on the job for seven months. Daly would not comment on the details of his departure earlier this year, but said: "If they get it right, there is a huge opportunity for Red Herring right now."
Daly was followed by G. Pascal Zachary, who worked for The Wall Street Journal for 13 years. He ran editorial for two months before quitting this spring.
"I resigned over differences regarding the editorial direction of Red Herring," Zachary said in an e-mail to Barron's.
"I told Alex often that Red Herring needed to follow proven editorial principles," says Zachary, who is now a senior editor at Business 2.0.
An e-mail message to Brandt was not returned before deadline. Vieux declined to comment about the departures of his first three editors, only to say cryptically that he is trying to do things differently than his predecessors and competitors.
For answers about frequency, circulation and editorial management, Vieux says we will have to wait. "We are going to make an announcement over the next 10 days," he declares.
While the original Red Herring was known to err on the side of Valley boosterism and geek glorification, Vieux hopes to recast the magazine in a more contemplative tone, even going so far as to do away with bylines. In doing so, he hopes to avoid a star system for writers that he says exists at too many magazines. A more international coverage strategy has also been bandied about.
The publisher repeatedly uses words such as "modest" and "humble" to describe the new voice he is seeking for the magazine. "We will have great humility about our analysis," Vieux promises. "A good dose of skepticism is healthy for our industry."
A good dose of skepticism about the future of the Red Herring may be healthy, at least until an editor stays on the job for longer than a cup of coffee.
Free to Spend
The end of Microsoft's six-year anti-trust-defense saga last week has pundits and investors eagerly awaiting what the software giant will do with its nearly $56.4 billion in cash. The final approval by a U.S. appeals court of the company's settlement with the Department of Justice is expected to clear the way for the company to finally lighten its wallet. Rick Sherlund, Goldman Sachs software analyst and longtime Microsoft watcher, has been predicting that Microsoft could buy back as much as $40 billion in stock before the end of the month, which would certainly give the shares a lift.
But an intriguing option was suggested last week by the New York Post, which reported a rumor that Microsoft has a "fascination" with MGM, which is on the block. A Sony-led group had been identified as the lead suitor for the Hollywood studio, but The Wall Street Journal reported that Time Warner has beat Sony to the punch by making a bid last week.
Now, there are rumblings that Microsoft could enter the fray, especially since the albatross of the antitrust suit has finally been lifted. There is a remote possibility that Microsoft would be interested in the Hollywood studio's coveted film library, but the share-buyback speculation, combined with some other buyout activity appears to be a safer bet.
Through it all, Precursor technology analyst Bill Whyman contends that people are missing the bigger point. While investors have been fixated on Microsoft's war chest, Whyman argues that approval of the settlement "is a big win for Microsoft."
"The appeals court is essentially saying that bundling is legal," with some exceptions, Whyman states.
The ruling should help Microsoft in its case with the European Union, which contends that bundling is not OK, he says, but it should also allow the company to be more aggressive in pursuing acquisition targets whose products can integrate with its Windows operating system.
And if Oracle's Larry Ellison were to win his antitrust battle with the Department of Justice over his bid to buy PeopleSoft, it soon could be open season on midsize software vendors.
Red Herring将“重出江湖”
Red Herring这本传奇性刊物的复活再一次清楚表明，风险资本投资已经走出了谷底，正开始蒸蒸日上。在泡沫经济时代，这是一本风险投资家和刚踏入商界的企业家必读的刊物，但与许多其他科技类杂志一样，随著互联网泡沫的破裂，Red Herring也宣布停刊了。复刊后的Red Herring现在与风险投资公司一样，都转向了更冷静、更精明的处事风格，该刊物还将计划将报导范围向矽谷以外大举拓展。
由维厄(Vieux)牵头、包括雅虎公司(Yahoo!)前首席执行长蒂姆?库格(Tim Koogle)在内的一个投资集团于2003年4月从Red Herring的创办人之一托尼?帕金森(Tony Perkins)和其他一些人士手中收购了Red Herring杂志的品牌和其他一些相关资产，收购金额不详。帕金森则又创办了网络媒体公司AlwaysOn，该公司下周将在斯坦福大学(Stanford University)举办一个科技业大会。
Red Herring杂志今年10月复刊时将遵循上述收购协议的规定，据报导该协议有一项有效期为18个月的竞业禁止条款，它是专门为Red Herring的复刊而定的。《财富》(Fortune)和Business 2.0两本杂志的出版商时代华纳公司(Time Warner)则收购了Herring的订户名单。自去年9月以来，维厄一直在经营Red Herring的免费网络版，据他说，自那以来该网站已发表了400余篇文章。
Red Herring复刊的细节尚不清楚。该刊物的一位代表曾向《巴伦周刊》表示，复刊后的Red Herring将是一份周刊，但维厄在随后的访谈中却拒绝证实这一点。
他说，这要视情况而定，可能会是周刊，但一切都尚未最终确定。
现年47岁的维厄从事过多种多样的工作，他曾担任过法国《世界报》(Le Monde)的驻美记者，专门负责报导矽谷的消息。这一从业经历似乎与他最新拾起的出版生涯最为沾边，但他还曾担任过软件企业家和大学教授，也曾出任过法国政府的顾问。
在Tandem Computers于1997年被康柏电脑公司(Compaq Computers)收购前，维厄曾在Tandem Computers担任过两年董事。他如今还担任著多家公司的董事，其中包括Check Point Software Technologies。通过自己的Dasar公司，维厄在欧洲和亚洲发起了两个著名的科技业圆桌会议。他持有巴黎大学(Universite de Paris)的法学学位和斯坦福大学MBA学位。
现在维厄的从业经历又将增加一项：Red Herring复刊后的发行人。上周在加州圣克拉拉召开的科技业大会上有一份公司简报宣称，Red Herring杂志将于今年秋季复刊，它现在正在以每年48美元的订费招徕新订户。当被问到如何使人们在尚不清楚Red Herring将是份周刊或是份月刊的情况下就订阅它时，维厄说：“这个问题问得好。”
这可不仅仅是个好问题。周刊的发行和印刷成本一般要比月刊高得多。维厄不愿透露他已为Red Herring复刊筹集了多少资金。目前为止，他只聘定了10位编辑人员。而在停刊前的最红火日子里，Red Herring曾有400多位员工。最重要的是，维厄尚未给Red Herring找到主编。
在筹划Red Herring复刊和经营该刊物网络版的一年多时间里，维厄已解雇了3位从业背景不凡的高级编辑人员。曾就职于Business 2.0的理查德?勃兰特(Richard Brandt)在加盟Red Herring几个月后已经离职。曾担任Business 2.0编辑的杰姆斯?戴利(James Daly)只为Red Herring工作了7个月。戴利不愿意透露他今年早些时候离职的细节，但表示，如果做法正确，Red Herring目前会有巨大的机会。
步戴利后尘从Red Herring离职的是G?帕斯卡?扎迦利(G. Pascal Zachary)，他曾在《华尔街日报》(The Wall Street Journal)工作了13年。他在今年春天从Red Herring离职前曾在该杂志负责了2个月的社论版。
扎迦利在致《巴伦周刊》的一份电子邮件中说，由于对Red Herring社论的导向有不同意见，他选择了辞职。
扎迦利说，他经常对维厄说，在撰写社论方面要遵循已经得到验证的原则。扎迦利现在担任Business 2.0.的高级编辑。
《巴伦周刊》发给勃兰特的电子邮件未得到回复。维厄拒绝就其上述三位编辑离职的事发表评论，只是语意含糊地说，他正试图以不同于其前任和竞争对手的方式行事。
维厄说，外界还需等待一段时间才能知道Red Herring在出刊频率、发行量和编辑队伍管理方面的情况。他说，公司将在未来10天内发表一项声明。
由于以前的Red Herring杂志就是由于对矽谷大唱赞歌和作低俗的吹捧而遭到读者厌弃的，维厄因此希望杂志复刊后在叙事风格上能更加谨慎，他甚至为此取消了记者姓名一栏。他还希望避免像许多其他杂志那样将作者分为三六九等。Red Herring的另一项新风格是报导内容更加国际化。
维厄不断用“适度”和“谦逊”来描述他正试图为Red Herring新确定的报导基调。他保证说，复刊后的Red Herring决不会对自己所做的分析持自以为是的态度，他还说，杂志出版业应多一些怀疑精神。
对Red Herring的前途多一些怀疑精神可能也是有益的，至少在它能有一位编辑将板凳坐热之前应是如此。
