• by Dana Blankenhorn , April 8, 2003

Fast Company has high hopes and new personnel as it sets out to tackle the business lifestyle category. John Byrne, who becomes editor of the Gruner + Jahr title at the end of this month, wants to build a business magazine for people who love their jobs.

Byrne expects lifestyle, work style and image ads will fill pages between stories from what he hopes will be the best stable of business writers ever assembled, as the economy recovers later this year.

"You know the people in a meeting who are always getting up and talking? The people who are really excited about what they're doing? That's my reader," he said. And he hopes a big chunk of them will be "C-Level," CEOs, CFOs, CTOs and CIOs.

Dan Rubin, executive vice president of Gruner + Jahr, recruited Byrne from "Business Week," where he was a senior writer. (Byrne is also co-author of former GE chairman Jack Welch's memoir, "Jack: Straight from the Gut.")

Rubin said Byrne's mentoring, confidence and enthusiasm, and desire to learn overrode his lack of management experience. Rubin and Byrne have their work cut out for them. Time Warner AOL's renovation of "Business 2.0" is well underway, "Wired" is still out there, and the closing of magazines such as "Red Herring" casts doubt on whether a need exists for a "technology business" magazine.

Byrne plans to steer his editorial ship between G+J's own "Inc." magazine, which he calls a "how-to" book, and financial magazines like "Business Week," appealing to the "heads, hearts and minds" of what he calls "a new generation of business leaders."

"We believe in workplace democracy. We believe in an economy built on knowledge. We want to capture the ideas and spirit of people trying to do something different, something meaningful. We are hitting the emotions of the reader that other magazines don't."

To Byrne, who made his reputation writing cover stories for "Business Week," that does not mean celebrity journalism, balance sheet analysis or political journalism. "We have no ideology other than work is a meaningful expression of self and that ideas will drive us to the future."

Byrne's stamp probably won't appear on the monthly until late summer or fall, by which time he hopes an economic recovery will be well underway.

"The business cycle will turn. People will come back to the market. And there will be good days ahead. I'm optimistic about the American economy and global economy. I don't think anyone who's a pessimist could lead a new magazine."

And it will be a new magazine, because with its move from Boston to New York, which Rubin said must be complete by year-end, most of the staff will have to turn over, especially those involved in the nuts-and-bolts work of magazine production.

The move, Rubin added, is a commitment to the magazine's future, not a cost-cutting measure. "It's not going to be less expensive to do this, it will be more expensive," he said. G+J's other business title, "Inc.", is also making the move to the German-based publisher's American headquarters in Manhattan.

"New York is the capital of American business, more so than Boston. There's more news here, and John will be in a better position to recruit top talent in New York," Rubin said.

Writers, however, won't have to be in New York. "We have two in New York, one in Raleigh, NC, one in Baltimore, one in San Francisco, and we have a handful in Boston. There's no need to move good writers. They can do it anywhere," said Rubin.

The measure of Byrne's success may not be circulation, which is already near 750,000, or its demographics, which are sound, but in how much time he can get top executives to spend reading his magazine, and how much "buzz" his features can generate.

"The goal is to teach and inspire people to be smarter and lead better," Byrne concluded. "I'm not straying from it. We want leading edge ideas. We believe information is more important than capital."