Mr. Magazine

Randall Lane is very clear when it comes to print and digital integration in Forbes magazine: “We put all our magazine stories online, all of them.”

“There’s no paywall,” Lane adds. “And what’s been amazing to watch is to see how these Forbes stories, when they’re put online, do so well.”

Lane attributes part of this on line success to the fact that the stories are in the magazine too. The stories on line are identified as stories that are from the X issue of Forbes magazine.

Lane makes many interesting and valid points, but the aforementioned, this idea that print complements and validates their digital venue because the stories are in the magazine as well, is an enlightening and exciting one.

Using print and digital together, making one platform define the diamond in the ring, while the other is the elegant finger it rests upon, is the intelligent and obvious answer to this condition the industry has created called the either/or syndrome. In the 21st century and with the technology and creative stimuli we enjoy today, there is no reason anything has to be either/or really, especially the magazine media experience.

Randall Lane realizes this and revels in the entire package that is the Forbes magazine experience.

When you walk into the Forbes building on 60 Fifth Avenue in New York City, you are welcomed by a series of paintings, drawings, and portraits that offer a sense of the majestic and historical days gone by, of people who have occupied those offices over the years. Randall Lane, wearing his “trademark” hat that he wears inside and outside his Fifth Avenue office, arrives in the historic library lined with bookshelves and filled with (ink on paper) books from floor to ceiling.

The irony isn’t misplaced, nor is it ignored. We learn and grow from our past and we use those experiences to increase our futures. And the packaging that the editor of Forbes describes is one that encompasses all the platforms – print – digital – live events, the total experience for the reader, the right medium for the right story. Each and every one is necessary, sufficient and relevant.

Click here to read the entire Mr. Magazine’s™ interview with the always “spinach energized Popeye” Randall Lane, Editor of Forbes magazine – a man who treasures the traditions of the Forbes brand, but recognizes the potential of a joint venture in today’s digital realms.