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a top Economist editor
Anderson helming biz-tech title through shakeout
By Jeff Bercovici
The question of who will succeed Katrina Heron at Wired has been answered.
Chris Anderson, currently U.S. business editor for The Economist, will take over for outgoing editor in chief Heron when she steps down in June after four years at the Condé Nast-owned technology magazine.
The announcement ends weeks of speculation about who would be tagged for the job. Among those reported to have passed under consideration were Wired deputy editor Alex Heard, Wired News editor George Shirk and Newsweek veteran Michael Elliott.
Also rumored as possible candidates were Kurt Andersen and Michael Hirschorn, founders of the recently-acquired Inside.com
As editor in chief, Anderson says he will keep Wired moving along its current course, a trajectory that falls midway between business reporting and broader general-interest technology coverage.
But his strong background in both business journalism and hard science—in contrast to Heron’s background at Vanity Fair and The New Yorker—suggests that Condé Nast may have chosen Anderson with a mind to furthering what some see as Wired’s drift toward the business end of the spectrum.
"I’ve got business running through my veins and it won’t come out," acknowledges Anderson. "I see technology through a lens that’s really grounded in business fundamentals."
Anderson has been in his current post at The Economist for a little over a year. He joined the magazine in 1994 after stints at Science and Nature, two of the most highly regarded scientific journals in the U.S. and the U.K., respectively.
From 1994 to 1997, he served as The Economist’s technology editor, meanwhile developing the magazine’s web site and internet strategy.
Subsequently, he was transferred to Hong Kong, where he became bureau chief and Asian business editor.
Before embarking on his career as a journalist, Anderson earned a bachelor’s degree in physics, did postgraduate work in quantum mechanics at Berkeley and worked at the U.S. Department of Transportation as assistant to the chief scientist.
"I come from a family of journalists. I tried not to follow totally in my father’s footsteps," he says of his years of science training.
Anderson says he looks forward to Wired as an opportunity to indulge in long-form storytelling and creative art design, neither of which has much of a place in The Economist.
Founded in 1992, Wired is generally well-regarded for both its thought-provoking writing and its occasional forays into adventurous design.
The magazine was nominated for a National Magazine Award for reporting this year for a story by John Heilemann on the Microsoft antitrust case. A January themed issue on design generated considerable buzz with its heat-sensitive cover.
Early on, Wired was inclined to cover technology for a general consumer audience. In recent years, however, as the boom and bust of the internet economy became the dominant technology story, Wired, understandably enough, seemed to be edging toward a business orientation.
It frequently got included in discussions of the so-called New Economy magazines, such as Red Herring, Business 2.0 and The Industry Standard.
Condé Nast did little to eschew the association, with good reason: The gush of dot.com advertising dollars helped Wired to a 36.1 percent ad page increase in 2000.
Anxious to milk the New Economy phenomenon still more, Condé Nast even hinted that it might turn Wired into a pure business play, with rumors abounding that chairman Si Newhouse planned to buy either Fast Company or Business 2.0 and fold it into Wired.
Now that the internet economy has gone south, however, a New Economy positioning probably seems far less attractive to Wired’s owners.
Tellingly, Condé Nast’s name has been largely absent from recent discussions of the sale of Business 2.0, with Time Inc. and Gruner + Jahr appearing to be the principal bidders. The latest scenario has Fortune buying Business 2.0 and merging it with its eCompany Now.
Asked whether he considers Wired to be aimed at a business or general-interest readership, Anderson declines to pick one or the other.
"I know I sound like I’m dodging the question, but I do think Wired has always been in a class of its own," he says.
"A lot of newsstands put Wired wrongly next to the hardcore computing magazines. Wired is about not just technology but also everything technology brings with it. It looks forward, in contrast to technology business magazines, which are very much centered on the here and now."
Blurring matters still further is an abundance of new titles that have sprung up in the past few years to cover the intersection of business and technology from a variety of angles.
Anderson predicts that competition among the tech books will subside as the slowing economy claims the lives of one or more of the newcomers.
"It goes without saying that we’re going through a period of consolidation right now. Any time you have consolidation, the survivors come out stronger."
April 12, 2001 © 2001 Media Life
-Jeff Bercovici is a staff writer for Media Life.
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