Good Friday 2006 continued…

December 28, 2007

The Gospel according to
Harvard Business School:

Last Temptation

The New York Times today:

NY Times obiturary for Steven T. Florio, 12/28/07

Teen Vogue

From The Harbus, the Harvard Business School independent
weekly, a 4/28/03
interview
with the late Steven Florio:

HARBUS: It seems you attribute the ability to ‘invest in quality’ and
to say ‘we’re going this direction because it’s going to help us be the
best’ directly to being a private company.

SF: For the 10 years I’ve been CEO, that has been the marching order
I’ve given to my staff, to all the Editors and Publishers, and quite
frankly the order that has been given to me by Newhouse. Now, this
doesn’t mean that I don’t get memos from him saying ‘I noticed that we
spent an additional $100,000 last year on Christmas parties, can you
please cut this back?’. He’s not a guy who’s just standing on top of
the building throwing off $100 bills. He wants the company run
efficiently.

On the other hand, if I say to him we really ought to take a hard look
at this idea called ‘Teen Vogue’, he’ll smile, as he did, and say ‘The
rest of the industry is cutting back, and you want to do a $50 million
launch?’.

And I said ‘It’s time. It is time for this magazine, it is time for
line extension, and we should do it’. I have a management meeting once
a week, which he [Newhouse] attends more often than not, where I
presented the new magazine idea to the whole management team, which is
only 6 or 7 people. I looked at him and said ‘We’re doing it’, and he
said ‘Go ahead, it’s a great idea’.

A Great Idea: