Forbes.com uses this Associated Press file photo of disgraced Congressman Jim Traficant to illustrate its comments about Youngstown.
Once known solely for excellent financial writing, Forbes appears to be heading the way of the Town Crier.
The magazine took another step in that direction last week when it published its latest Most Miserable Cities list, with Cleveland (No.1), Youngstown (18) and three other Ohio cities in the top 20.
The Town Criers are a chain of Ohio weekly newspapers, and about 10 years ago they birthed an intriguing idea. They decided to award the “best” businesses in their communities, in a range of categories.
The Town Criers published forms, about eight inches square and bordered by a dotted line, on their back pages for several weeks and encouraged readers to fill out the forms and mail them in for their favorite businesses. The businesses for which the most forms were received were declared the Town Crier Best.
Initially, being the best caught on. Merchants implored shoppers to mail in the Town Crier forms. Those who won proudly displayed their Town Crier Best plaques. Some put “Town Crier Best” in their ads or on banners.
Over time, though, being the best lost its allure. As it became common knowledge that some businesses bought dozens of Town Criers and had employees cut out forms, fill them out and send them in, credibility suffered. Readers and businesses lost interest.
In the last few years of that initiative, the Town Crier looked silly. Some of the restaurants they declared the best were ones I had never heard of. Sometimes really ugly home-made ads by merchants of lousy repute included the words, “Town Crier Best.”
Forbes doesn’t look quite that silly, but it’s getting there. The magazine now publishes more than 50 lists, many of them with questionable value.
In the early 1990s, when I left a news job to work at a public relations firm, I badly wanted to land our larger clients in Forbes. So I studied the book so closely I became obsessed with it. I got to know Forbes writers by their work and made inferences about the information we needed to get a client through that gate.
At a media relations conference in New York, a Forbes editor talked about how difficult that process was. The room was packed. I was fortunate enough during that trip to schedule a meeting with a Forbes editor at his office. I’ll never forget the high doors, soft carpets and stern faces. This was a news office, but it felt like a corporate law firm.
Despite our firm’s best efforts, we couldn’t get our clients in Forbes with any regularity or prominence. They were pleased to land small mentions now and then.
Today, some of the articles I see in Forbes look like rewritten press releases. There are some great reads, but also a lot of very, very light fare.
And tons of lists. Forbes has leveraged its popular Richest Americans list into lists of the wealthiest people in Australia, Japan, China and other nations, and that’s smart. The magazine has also expanded to lists of colleges and cities.
But line extensions have natural limits, and Forbes‘ list strategy has surpassed those. Its roster of 50-plus lists now includes the top-earning models, top-earning dead celebrities and best cities for singles. This ain’t the book it used to be.
Because of its knock on Youngstown and Cleveland, I was thinking of boycotting this latest edition of Forbes. But I’ve decided to buy one. I want to see if there’s a form with a dotted line border on the back.
Comments welcome below. Here are a couple other takes on Forbes’ latest list:
