Forbes is an American publishing and media company. Its flagship publication, Forbes magazine, is published biweekly. Its primary competitors in the national business magazine category are Fortune, which is also published biweekly, and Business Week. The magazine is well-known for its lists, including its lists of the richest Americans (the Forbes 400) and its list of billionaires. The motto of Forbes magazine is "The Capitalist Tool." Its editor-in-chief is Steve Forbes.
B. C. Forbes, a financial columnist for the Hearst papers, and his partner Walter Drey, the general manager of the Magazine of Wall Street, founded Forbes magazine in 1917. Forbes provided the money and the name and Drey provided the publishing expertise. The original name of the magazine was Forbes: Devoted to Doers and Doings. Drey became vice-president of the B.C. Forbes Publishing Company, while B.C. Forbes became editor-in-chief, a post he held until his death in 1954. B.C. Forbes was assisted in his later years by his two eldest sons, Bruce Charles Forbes (1916–1964) and Malcolm Stevenson Forbes (1917–1990).
When Malcolm Forbes took over, he had a more hands-off approach on operations, but did provide two strategic initiatives that changed Forbes forever. He instituted an in-house editorial staff, instead of the previous heavy reliance on freelancers, and he started the first of the rankings articles for which Forbes became famous.
The popularity of Forbes magazine has extended to mainstream and Hip-Hop culture. 50 Cent has released the official remix to his hit single, "I Get Money" off his September 11, 2008 album, Curtis, entitled Forbes 1,2,3 (also known as the "Billion Dollar Remix"). The title of the song comes from the fact that Jay-Z, 50 Cent, and Diddy were listed as Forbes' Top 3 money-making Kings of Hip-Hop, respectively. The unfinished video for Forbes 1,2,3 can be seen as the intro to 50 Cent's single, "I Still Kill" featuring Akon, off his multi-platinum album Curtis.
Apart from Forbes and its lifestyle supplement, ForbesLife, other titles are published, including Forbes Asia and eight local language editions. Steve Forbes and his magazine's writers offer investment advice on the weekly Fox TV show Forbes on Fox and on Forbes On Radio. Other company groups include Forbes Conference Group, Forbes Investment Advisory Group and Forbes Custom Media. From the 2009 Times report: "Steve Forbes recently returned from opening up a Forbes magazine in India, bringing the number of foreign editions to 10. In addition, this year the company began publishing ForbesWoman, a quarterly magazine with a companion Web site."
The company also formerly published American Heritage and Invention & Technology magazines. After failing to find a buyer, Forbes suspended publication of these two magazines as of May 14, 2007. Those magazines have since been purchased by the American Heritage Publishing Company, and have resumed publication as of Spring 2008 .
David Churbuck founded Forbes' Web site in 1996. The site uncovered Stephen Glass' journalistic fraud in The New Republic in 1998, an article that drew attention to internet journalism. The site, like the magazine, publishes many lists focusing on billionaires and their possessions, especially expensive homes, a critical aspect of the website's apparent popularity. See a list of lists below.
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