Quality as a Service
For 104 years, Forbes has brought its readers along, often rst, into the boardrooms of Edison and Ford, Jobs and Gates. While, as a policy, we don’t cover ourselves, it’s appropriate to con rm that Forbes recently announced plans to go public through a SPAC, Magnum Opus Acquisition—since the ultimate bene ciary, if we do our jobs right, is you.
The deal should leave Forbes with up to $145 million on its balance sheet. The mandate: investing in great journalism—content and products that make you better informed, often entertained and maybe even richer. We’ll be empowered to create more of it, in more ways, on more platforms.
Internally, we’re going to grow—and focus.
Our reporters will report. Our number crunchers will crunch. Our data analysts will analyze. And so on. Breadth has always allowed Forbes to punch above its weight, and while we won’t shed that entrepreneurial derring-do, narrower mandates will produce more excellence.
You can see the positive e ects on investing in journalism in this issue. We’ve already been putting big resources into our coverage of ntech and crypto, including the hiring of Steven Ehrlich as our rst research director of digital assets. Ehrlich focused on
ntech and intelligence for a decade at shops ranging from Citi to Booz Allen Hamilton before focusing on cryptocurrencies; overlay that with some journalism experience and you get the best pro le to date of the fascinating Sam Bankman-Fried, 29, who in four years has built a $22.5 billion crypto empire (page 158). Then ip to page 166 and see what hundreds of hours of dogged reporting can produce: an unparalleled look at a nancial corruption trial shaking the Vatican—and its direct ties to Pope Francis. This all comes courtesy of new Forbes contributor Gerald Posner, one of the best in-depth reporters in the world. His de nitive account of the JFK assassination was a nalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History.
There’s a lot more of that kind of world-class quality to come. It’s an exciting time to be in media, and an important time in history. We’re now positioned to rise to the moment, in the ultimate service of our audience.