Dear Steve:
After 19 years of unbroken loyalty to your print magazine, I canceled my subscription today.
Forbes was once a vibrant, business-focused publication that covered known companies as well as start-ups with color, flair and good, solid reporting. I also enjoyed many of the lifestyle features.
Sure, there were always the right-leaning commentaries and opinion pieces, but they were not the dominant foci of the publication. While I did not agree with all of them, they occaisionally made me think about the issues in new ways.
Over the past few years, however, your magazine has morphed into something other than a business publication. As the horror of the Bush presidency unfolded, you seemed to feel the need to become the "Fox News" of print (NOT a good thing), in an attempt to prop up and apologize for what is clearly one of the most disastrous presidencies in American history.
All of this culminated (for me) with the September 27, 2010, cover story about President Obama by Dinesh D'Souza. You have now completely jumped the shark into pure political advocacy. Which is all well and good, but it is not what I paid for when I subscribed to Forbes. It is not interesting and I am not interested. (If I were, I would subscribe to the National Review.)
Further, D'Souza's screed is so unpersuasive, infantile in its arguments and, one might say, treasonous, that I honestly weep for the trees that gave their life to print such a worthless piece of dreck.
"How He Thinks" - That is the title of the article. Really? Dinesh is so f-ing smart he knows how President Obama thinks? Or is he a magical mind reader? He must be, because Dinesh clearly did NOT speak to the president or read his autobiography, beyond the title and maybe a few CliffsNotes.
This cover story calls to mind your prescient cover by Peggy Noonan back in 1994 titled "Why Bill Clinton is a One-Term President" How'd that work out?
(BTW - what kind of name is "Dinesh?" He claims to be Christian, but nearly one fifth of everyone within earshot of me right now, including my beagle, thinks he is Muslim. Not that there is anything wrong with that...)
So congratulations, Steve. In a media landscape where your magazine gets thinner by the month (read: fewer advertisers), you have managed to alienate one of your most loyal subscribers. Want to know why the media is dying? Check the mirror.
Good luck. Maybe you, Bob Guccione and Hugh Hefner can grab a beer some time and reminisce about the good old days. You've sunk to the journalism equivalent of political porn, so I'm sure it would be a grand time.
Sincerely,
Bill Baker
