Everything about Fortune Magazine totally explained
Fortune is a
global business magazine published by
Time Inc.'s Fortune|Money Group. Founded by
Henry Luce in
1930, the publishing business, consisting of
Time,
Life,
Fortune, and
Sports Illustrated, grew to become
Time Warner, the world's largest
media conglomerate, before it was acquired by
AOL in 2000.
Fortune's primary competitors in the national business magazine category are
Forbes, which is also published bi-weekly, and
BusinessWeek. The magazine is especially known for its annual features ranking companies by revenue.
CNNMoney.com is the online home of
Fortune, in addition to
Money and
Fortune Small Business.
History and organization
Fortune was founded by
Time co-founder Henry Luce in February
1930, four months after the
Wall Street Crash of 1929 that marked the outset of the
Great Depression.
Briton Hadden, Luce's partner, wasn't enthusiastic about the idea, but Luce went forward with it after Hadden's
October 15,
1929 death (of
streptococcus).
Luce wrote a memo to the Time, Inc. board in November 1929, "We won't be over-optimistic. We will recognize that this business slump may last as long as an entire year."
Single copies of that first issue cost $1 at a time when the Sunday
New York Times was only 5c.
Fortune was also noted for its photography, featuring the work of
Margaret Bourke-White and others.
Walker Evans served as its photography editor from 1945-1965.
An urban legend says that art director
T M Clelland mocked up the cover of the first issue with the $1 price because nobody had yet decided how much to charge; the magazine was printed before anyone realized it, and when people saw it for sale, they thought that the magazine must really have worthwhile content. In fact, there were 30,000 subscribers who'd already signed up to receive that initial 184-page issue.
During the
Great Depression,
Fortune developed a reputation for its social conscience, for
Walker Evans and
Margaret Bourke-White's color photographs, and for a team of writers including
James Agee,
Archibald MacLeish,
John Kenneth Galbraith, and
Alfred Kazin, hired specifically for their writing abilities.
Fortune became an important leg of Luce's Time/Life media empire, which has grown to become
Time Warner. For many years
Fortune was published as a monthly, but
as of September 2005, it's published biweekly. It considers its purview the entire field of business, including the people, trends, companies, and ideas that characterize modern business.
While circulation of the business magazines sector has apparently slumped since
2000.,
Fortune claims their circulation has risen from 833,000 to 857,000 in that period.
Fortune lists
A theme of
Fortune is its regular publishing of researched and ranked lists. In the
human resources field, for example, their
Best Companies to Work For
list is an industry benchmark. Its most famous lists rank companies by
gross revenue and profile their businesses:
In August 2006,
CNNmoney.com published a
feature from
Fortune magazine which recommended books and websites focused on the world's top five companies, as ranked in the "Fortune Global 500". In a novel twist, each company website was featured alongside a website taking a critical view of the company's activities. For example, the recommended websites for Royal Dutch Shell, listed as number 3 in the rankings, was Shell's own portal website along with
royaldutchshellplc.com which focuses on alleged negative aspects of the oil giant. The unstated but logical purpose of the recommendations was to allow the public, investors and shareholders to arrive at a balanced view of each company, taking into account the positive and negative information available from the recommended websites.
Fortune on CNNMoney.com
Further Information
Get more info on 'Fortune Magazine'.
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