I just read an article about Forbes magazine that was published on August 10, 2023, by the Columbia Journalism Review, “Big Business: The disarray and discontent at Forbes,” by Feven Merid. It's 4,900 words. [Edit: I originally listed the character count instead of word count.]
https://www.cjr.org/the_feature/forbes-big-business.php
Now I better understand the magazine's business and content models and why they sometimes publish stories that aren't good journalism under the “Forbes” brand. They do it for the money, of course.
From the article:
“Forbes has some six hundred employees, with around two hundred in the newsroom; professional journalists are vastly outnumbered by “contributors,” of whom there are at least two thousand. The company also enables people to pay to place an article; who is writing what can be hard to keep track of.”
“The branded-ventures business includes BrandVoice, a marketing platform, which houses what’s known as the “paid program” for those seeking to place pieces—often a company or an entrepreneur. In some cases, an interested party will arrange with a Forbes marketing representative for a writer outside the newsroom to produce sponsored content; in others, a business will submit something directly, which gets a small “brand contributor” tag in the byline. BrandVoice also promotes something called Forbes Insights, which commissions studies from research firms on clients’ behalf….”
The Forbes union sometimes pickets Forbes' events:
“At the street entry of the pier was a large inflated pig dressed as a businessman, holding a green bag of cash with one hand and strangling a laborer with the other. 'In my fifteen years here, I think my average workweek has probably been about fifty to fifty-five hours, and all of that overtime has been unpaid,' Merrilee Barton, a photo editor, told me.”