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. In turn,
AOL grew as it acquired Time Warner in 2000 when Time Warner was the world's largest
media conglomerate.
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 December 1941 issue
was founded by
Time co-founder Henry Booth Luce in February 1930, four months after the
Wall Street Crash of 1929 that marked the onset of the
Great Depression.
Briton Hadden, Luce's partner, wasn't enthusiastic about the idea, but Luce went forward with it after Hadden's
February 27,
1929 death (probably of
septicemia).
Luce wrote a memo to the Time, Inc. board in November 1929, "We will not 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 5¢.
At a time when business publications were little more than numbers and statistics printed in black and white,
Fortune was an oversized 11"×14", using creamy heavy paper, and art on a cover printed by a special process.
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 had already signed up to receive that initial 184-page issue.
[ By 1937, the number of subscribers had grown to 460,000.]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 January, 1978, it is published twice a month. It considers its purview the entire field of business, including the people, trends, companies, and ideas that characterize modern business.
Marshall Loeb was named managing editor in 1986 and stepped down in May 1994 upon hitting
Time Inc.'s mandatory retirement age of 65, to be replaced by Walter Kiechel 3d, an executive editor at the publication. During his tenure at
Fortune, Loeb was credited with expanding the traditional focus on business and the economy with added graphs, charts and tables, as well as the addition of articles on topics such as executive life, and social issues connected to the world of business, such as the effectiveness of public schools and on homelessness.
[Carmody, Deirdre. , The New York Times, May 2, 1994. Accessed February 10, 2009.]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 list is an industry benchmark. Its most famous lists rank companies by
gross revenue and profile their businesses:
- Fortune Global Most Admired Company
See also
