These days, most of the content on Forbes.com is self-published, Lewis D'Vorkin, chief product officer of Forbes, told me in an interview Thursday afternoon. Authors, whether on staff or freelance, write their own headlines, upload their own multimedia, format their own articles in WordPress and press the publish button themselves. Unlike the printed product, no one edits their work. No one verifies the facts.
"Quality in a magazine is different: it's about beautiful pages, great writing. It's very well fact-checked and edited, you can't fix it [once it's in print]," says D'Vorkin. "Quality in the digital space is about timeliness, relevance, community. When things need to be repaired online you can do that."
The new system makes Forbes.com more of a platform for content than a producer of content. "What we're doing is extending our brand to 1,000 brands -- the people who write through our prism," D'Vorkin says. We're also extending our brand to marketers who have to publish content on our platform," he adds. Forbes allows advertisers to run sponsored blogs on its site.
The system allows Forbes.com to produce more content more quickly. It also saves the publication the cost of hiring and maintaining editors.
But it comes with other costs. Take a post Ironfire Capital's Eric Jackson posted to Forbes.com late last month titled, "Sheryl Sandberg is the Valley’s ‘It’ Girl – Just like Kim Polese once was.” The post provoked angry reactions from many in the tech and media industries, who found it "sexist" and "ridiculous."
In our interview, D'Vorkin said that Forbes vets its contributors "very carefully," but that contributors are ultimately accountable for the content they publish. "If they do a good job, they build a following. If they don't do a good job being accountable for their content, people aren't going to trust them," he said.
RT @johnolilly: Outrageously bad+sexist piece on Sheryl Sandberg @Forbes. Hard to see them writing this about men. buff.ly/KVqE1H— Jim Scheinman (@jimscheinman) May 31, 2012
But, I would argue, posts like Jackson's don't just reflect badly on Jackson. They reflect badly on the whole Forbes brand. When some complained about the article, they didn't mention Jackson -- they mentioned Forbes.
Some changes in Forbes.com's design should help emphasize the brands of individual contributors over Forbes's own brand. On Thursday, a hovering toolbar called the "Follow Bar" appeared at the bottom of the site, which allows users to keep track of new content from their favorite authors, topics and businesses.
For some time, users have been able to click to email subscribe to different writers and topics by clicking a "+Follow" button on the site. Now, users will receive both emails and see links to their latest work appear in the toolbar. A rotating list of headlines from the rest of the site -- including some links to posts authored by advertisers -- will appear on the right side of the toolbar.
"The world of journalism is changing, the economics are being challenged," D'Vorkin said majestically. "We're building a real, sustainable model for advertising-supported journalism, that's what we believe we're doing."