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An Incomplete History of Forbes as a Platform for Scams, Grift and Bad Journalism (niemanlab.org) 31

Joshua Benton, writing for NiemanLab: If you need a refresher: The Gordon Gecko 1980s and NASDAQ-boom 1990s were both very good to Forbes, but things started to drift downward in the 2000s, both in print and in the new world online. When the financial crisis hit, there were cuts and layoffs and, for the first time, a non-Forbes hired to run the place, Mike Perlis. He and chief product officer Lewis D'Vorkin came up with a revival strategy that just screams early 2010s digital media: It's all about scale, baby, scale. Forbes' staff of journalists could produce great work, sure. But there were only so many of them, and they cost a lot of money. Why not open the doors to Forbes.com to a swarm of outside "contributors" -- barely vetted, unedited, expected to produce at quantity, and only occasionally paid?

As of 2019, almost 3,000 people were "contributors" -- or as they told people at parties, "I'm a columnist for Forbes." Let's think about incentives for a moment. Only a very small number of these contributors can make a living at it -- so it's a side gig for most. The two things that determine your pay are how many articles you write and how many clicks you can harvest -- a model that encourages a lot of low-grade clickbait, hot takes, and deceptive headlines. And many of these contributors are writing about the subject of their main job -- that's where their expertise is, after all -- which raises all sorts of conflict-of-interest questions. And their work was published completely unedited -- unless a piece went viral, in which case a web producer might "check it more carefully." All of that meant that Forbes suddenly became the easiest way for a marketer to get their message onto a brand-name site. And since this strategy did build up a ton of new traffic for Forbes -- publishing an extra 8,000 pieces a month will do that! -- lots of other publications followed suit in various ways.

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An Incomplete History of Forbes as a Platform for Scams, Grift and Bad Journalism

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  • Gee - people use a respected resource with little oversight and they turn Ito their own little swampy playground? If clicks generate money, click bait results. If you can cover your scam with a veil of repeatability from a well known business mag, go for it.
  • by Editorial Failure ( 7475146 ) on Friday February 11, 2022 @04:03PM (#62260243)

    Our dear friends, the wonderful and talented, the editors who won't edit.

    Just this summary: There's no middle or end to it, no actual summarising. Just the laziest of the lazy copy/paste actions, simply the first two paragraphs of the article.

    Same as all the other summaries, and for a cherry on top, a clickbait headline.

  • Old news (Score:4, Insightful)

    by GameboyRMH ( 1153867 ) <gameboyrmh.gmail@com> on Friday February 11, 2022 @04:10PM (#62260253) Journal

    Conspiracy nuts have been using Forbes blogs like this to lend some credibility to their nutjobbery and snake oil for many years now. For those who don't know that basically anyone can get an account there and that a forbes domain should carry about as much legitimacy as a wordpress or blogspot domain, it can fool them...and these are exactly the kind of gullible suckers they're after.

  • As of 2019, almost 3,000 people were "contributors" -- or as they told people at parties, "I'm a columnist for Forbes."

    My thinks the blogger protests too much. Perhaps he's been ignored by the subject of his contempt and it should be 3,001? :-)

    I will congratulate him, though, on this accomplishment listed in his NiemanLab Bio [niemanlab.org]:

    He wrote his first HTML in January 1994.

    • As of 2019, almost 3,000 people were "contributors" -- or as they told people at parties, "I'm a columnist for Forbes."

      My thinks the blogger protests too much. Perhaps he's been ignored by the subject of his contempt and it should be 3,001? :-)

      I will congratulate him, though, on this accomplishment listed in his NiemanLab Bio [niemanlab.org]:

      He wrote his first HTML in January 1994.

      Interesting how I also didn't recognize the name NiemanLab and found the layout of the article a bit testing. Did some quick searches and came up with them having been featured before: https://slashdot.org/index2.pl... [slashdot.org] NiemanLabs being the product of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] the author being founder and director 2008-2020 https://www.niemanlab.org/auth... [niemanlab.org] and decided for myself that this seems like a legit site that I've just failed to not

  • by bbsguru ( 586178 ) on Friday February 11, 2022 @04:33PM (#62260307) Homepage Journal
    Whether it happened first at Forbes or not, this is a distressingly familiar formula now.
    It's hard to think of any "reputable source" that hasn't fallen into the more-clicks-at-all-cost trap.
    Actually, it's getting harder and harder to think of anything as a "reputable source".
    • Re:Too Common (Score:4, Interesting)

      by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Friday February 11, 2022 @04:47PM (#62260373) Journal

      It's hard to think of any "reputable source" that hasn't fallen into the more-clicks-at-all-cost trap.

      We still have the NYT, WSJ, and BBC.

      • by MobyDisk ( 75490 )

        I nominate Ars Technica, NPR, and Reuters for the list.

        • Bloomberg News (not some of the other stuff) probably belongs on there as well.

          • by mjwx ( 966435 )
            Of all the sources listed, BBC, NYT, WSJ, Ars, NRP, Bloomberg and routers (I'd add Al Jazeera as well) the only one I'd inherently distrust is the Wall Street Journal as that is a Murdoch rag and Murdoch is well known for trying to use his news businesses to influence politics (and is very upset that he's no longer a kingmaker). None of them I'd trust as a single source of truth, it's always a good thing to get your information from multiple sources.

            Reading the news is about discerning the facts and maki
      • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

        by taustin ( 171655 )

        I wish I had mod points so I could flag that as funny.

  • Remember SCO? Forbes took their side. The magazine has been a wreck since Steve Forbes put his stamp on it.

  • I subscribed to Forbes for several years because ... business porn. One day a small box arrived in the mail. Forbes had sent a CueCat bar code reader, unsolicited. It had a printed license agreement that was so intricate and sucking vortex-y that I felt like someone had sent a souvenir of Chernobyl. I tossed the thing immediately and did not renew my Forbes subscription.
  • I know forbes has been posting raw video of senate meetings that aren't painting the left in a good light at all.

    So they're going after Forbes now? Seems convenient. I'm not saying the statement is without merit, I'm just saying the timing is suspiciously convenient.

  • by Misagon ( 1135 ) on Friday February 11, 2022 @10:03PM (#62261161)

    Their editor-in-chief: Steve Forbes was one of the signatory members of the Project for the New American Century [wikipedia.org], that was behind the invasion of Iraq and that whole shameful chapter of recent history.

    That is, the PNAC had lobbied for invading Iraq during the Clinton era, and took seats in the government under GWB. (They had chosen GWB as their front-man, not the other way around.)

  • People still think Forbes is credible brand name?? I'll have to ask around, but I'm pretty sure no one under the age of 40 finds anything about Forbes credible. I don't care who you are, or what level of credibility you have as an individual. If you publish an article in Forbes, it has zero credibility. They haven't been a good source of any kind of information in well over a decade.

    These contributors that they say they always stay above board and don't do any of the shady things... stop contributing to For

There has been a little distress selling on the stock exchange. -- Thomas W. Lamont, October 29, 1929 (Black Tuesday)

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