With Apple and Facebook reporting stellar earnings last week, the cult of the entrepreneur got another vote of approval from the investing public. What makes entrepreneurs tick? How are they so special? Here are some mags that explore the world of the C-suite:
Fast Company promises a profile revealing what Mark Zuckerberg won’t tell you about his company, Facebook. Since Zuck, as the writer refers to him, didn’t talk to the magazine, it doesn’t have much of a clue, either, in its jargon-heavy and fawning take on the Harvard dropout. It has so many lines like “there’s a big opportunity in catalyzing everyone toward a single goal” that you get the impression the writer actually believes what he’s typing. Fast Co., which produces a list of the most inventive people in business, also has a profile of the late hotelier Alexander Calderwood that “exposed the high toll creativity can take,” making it seem like the award-winning magazine has started to lose the plot. A skewering of half-baked Wheat Thins “selfie contest” got a chuckle, though.
Wired magazine’s smartphone issue takes a look at the supposed “creative explosion” that the VC-funded Silicon Valley tech world has ushered in. The mag, which as always is beautifully designed, focuses on a handful of people — most of them already artists — who use apps like Instagram, Twitter and Vine. It’s unconvincing. The features smack of the caricature of the too-late old businessman discovering what’s cool only after everyone else has moved on.
Success magazine comes with an audio CD that will tell you “how to be a powerful leader.” Finally! The cover story is a soft treatment of Jimmy Kimmel focusing on what made him a superb late-night host. Its conclusion? Working hard and getting to the office early. It’s so generic it makes the comedian seem less interesting than he really is. Primers on how to design a better business card and how to be happier don’t really offer much either.
Entrepreneur has an all-around solid issue that takes on the mega (why Sbarro and RadioShack are failing) to the microscopic (why meeting face to face with clients affects your brain chemistry). Its focus on why business people are successful makes it stand out among other magazines directed toward the start-up class. Even with its grating tendency to call business founders “’treps,” it has a clear and convincing profile of Yves Béhar, CEO of business incubator Fuseproject. It has one big clunker in “15 Signs You’re a ’trep,” where supposed indicators like “you work and play hard” and “you get into hot water” describe anyone under 30, probably a key demographic.
The New Yorker has a helpful guide to the less financially savvy, who may trip over Wall Street jargon that often means the opposite of what it sounds like. For example, “To ‘bail out’ is to slop water over the side of a boat” — not inject taxpayer money into a failing bank. Elsewhere, a man may have been framed for murder by Chicago police, with the implication that he isn’t the only one. Tyrone Hood got 75 years for the murder of a college kid, with cops at the time allegedly coercing witnesses into accusations that they later recanted. Now, state attorneys may be resisting a review. “If you have a proven instance where an officer lied… it calls into question all the other cases,” says U. Chicago law professor Craig Futterman.
New York has a cover story on “ethnic plastic surgery,” whose devotees are looking, typically, to make their faces look less typical of their own race and more typical of someone else’s race. Calling the subject a “minefield,” author Maureen O’Connor treads lightly through some cringeworthy examples. But being half Asian and half white, O’Connor unleashes some well-placed contempt for some politically correct types on the subject of mixed-race couples, noting the “bizarre enthusiasm of strangers who marvel, ‘Your babies will be so beautiful.’” Icky. Elsewhere, we get a chart-heavy rundown on the New York taxi wars. The latest entrant, Lyft, is looking to undercut the rates charged by Uber, although it has a “very stupid” signature pink mustache car designator, the magazine notes.
Time has a sharp analysis of the mess in Ukraine and where it’s headed, and this mess isn’t headed any place good. Declaring the start of “Cold War II,” the magazine says, “The West is losing [Vladimir] Putin’s dangerous game.” Europe has been, and will remain, more or less supine while Putin continues to sink his claws into Ukraine. Curiously, the article doesn’t mention Angela Merkel by name. But President Obama is justly called out for his weak response as he faces a disinterested electorate. “The least Putin could do was the most Obama could ask for,” writes Simon Shuster, referring to Obama’s pathetic plea for Russia to cooperate with the investigation of the downing of flight MH17. “And Putin evidently will keep going as long as each new crisis only makes him stronger.”