His life when he assumes the presidency as he talked about, the awesome power of responsibility of the presidency, that is when we could explore who he really was in that time of his life. Glor Forbes Magazine at 100 and lbj, when we continue. Rose funding for charlie rose has been provided by the following and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Glor Forbes Magazine was founded 100 years ago this september. Bc forbes, a scottish immigrant accomplished business journalist began the magazine to chronicle and celebrate the world of american business. Since then, forbes has become more than just a magazine growing into a media and Technology Company as well. To celebrate the magazines 710 yell forbes amassed a to z enpsychencyclopedia of the 100 t business finds which each penned an original essay for the occasion. Joining me to discuss the future of this iconic brand is steve forbes, he is editor in chief and chairman of forbes media. Mike federle is 43 and chief operating officer, randall lane is the current editor of Forbes Magazine. I am very pleased to have all of them at this table. Welcome, gentlemen. Steve let me start with you. What was forbes then and what is forbes now . I think in spirit forbes is the same today and i think it really was put in the fishes issue when we grandfathered it in 1917 when he said, business was originated for the purpose of producing happiness, not to pile up money, not the to pile up millions. He believed in what we now call entrepreneurial capitalism so he is like a drama critic, loved it when something is done right, hated it when things are done wrong. For example he went after henry ford for the way he treated his employees, so he wanted the best side of capitalism because he thought thats all how we got a chance to rise up as he did as a penally less, penniless immigrant. It showed his entrepreneurial spirit starting a great magazine in the year of the great war and the same year as the russian 0 revolution, we took pride at the end of the cold war my grandfathers creation, the capitalist tool survived lenins creation, the soviet union, so it beat come nig in, communism. Glor , communism. Glor there is a fascinating gorbachev story want to talk about. First the magazine got some traction to start. William Randolph Hurst offered to buy it. Yes. It was the only time he was a syndicated columnist for lawyers and he allows him to continue and my grandfather was the only person hurst allowed to have something on the side of the, that hurst didnt own. In 1928 he offered the equivalent of tens of millions of dollars to buy my grandfather out and my grandfather proudly turned it down. He was a staunch independent fellow, and a couple of years ys later he has reason to regret it because the depression came and the magazine was bankrupt in all but name. He had a, had to really scratch and couldnt cash his own paychecks for years and put them in a safe because there wasnt money in the bank. Glor how close was the magazine to going under. It almost did and thats why he had to rely on freelance writing. He had to scratch his savings, every penny he had and he also instituted what the employees called scott week, every fourth week you didnt get paid, it was equivalent of 25 percent pay cut, but people then in those desperate times were glad to have a job. And one of his proudest moments is years later being able to cash those checks that had piled up in the safe because there wasnt money in the bank at the time. Glor talk a little bit, steve, if you could about leadership and the transition and the the changes from bc, your grandfather, to malcolm, your father, to yourself. Well, this gets to something that peter drucker, management guru who died several years ago who is still in Business Schools today, businesses should always remind themselves what is your purpose . What are you trying to do . In our case in this belief in can entrepreneurial capitalism, i believe that spirit allowed us to survive when the internet rose up, shattered everything we did, even after world war 2, forbes was done by freelancers, my father made the transition to having it staff written which was the way to get good articles in a timely way then, so he made a huge transitions in the 40s and 50s, became very statistically oriented, grading mutual funds and the like and then in the nineties and the early 2,000s, when the web destroyed everything we thought we knew about the print industry, we were able to make the transition to the new age. Glor but even before the web came along you were constantly having to find new ways to get attention for the magazine, one of them was the richest list which started in 19. 1982. Glor 82. And this underscores too one of the things that always undermines businesses, you get comfortable doing what you are doing. My father came up with the idea of doing what he called the forbes 400 based on party of decades ago, the top 400 people in new york so thats how he picked the number. The Editorial Department resisted and said it is crazy, the information is not there. There, it is a waste of time, they did a quote study which they said it is impossible and my father said, okay, i will do it, i will hire the people, grade some of your people and do it. Okay, okay. We will do it. Huge success. Huge success. They told your dad there is no way we can do this, impossible. Impossible. They were resistant and had ernest conversations, i remember, oh, we cant do this. The information is not there. The problemmers and fund raisers are going to descend on these people and it turned out to be immensely popular because one it showed who was making the wealth and also how much the list has changed over the years. The first list had tons of dupont it is, rockefellers, none of those names are on it today. Glor new money. New money, a constant flux in the strength of the american economy. Things dont stay the same. People rise up. And so the names on today, i guarantee in 20 years half of them wont be there. Glor one of the disinteresting and honest parts i think of the hundredth anniversary you wrote, which is really interesting piece of history is how aggressively and lavishly forbes has always courted the advertisers. And you talk about the sailing in particular in this article. Thats right. Well, my father is always interested in boats and so being a good entrepreneur he figured out how to combine in this interest with marketing in a way that a normal company wouldnt even think of doing. So we got a series of yachts named the highlander, we had five of them over the years, and they people would think oh that is just extrav against no, it is my fathers scottish genes at work, how do you invest in a way that gives a big return so almost every night they would have advertisers, agency people, ceos and the type and my brothers and i and my sister when we were growing up we had, we attended many of these occasions and we always had to memorize who was on there, why they are on there. And we had to do our part to sell the magazine. My father always said you better know where your bread is buttered, you better help us out doing it. Glor the 75th Anniversary Party we talked about, this is with reagan after he leftovers. Right. Glor and gorbachev. Gorbachev as well. Glor what happened there . Well, we had the radio city music hall a couple of thousand people, and we thought it would be great to bring the man who brought down communism, Ronald Reagan, instrumental and the man who made it possible, a peaceful transition from communism, gorbachev, bring them together for an event each speaking and having a great time. Just before the event, gorbachev made demands, he wanted to go out alone, he said you are exploiting me. And by golly i thought, oh, my goll, this whole thing is going to collapse, how do i go out there and say the show is not on . Because all of this is superintendent negotiated beforehand . Yes question had gone over this a ton, many times with his people piece by piece by piece, timeline by timeline, just to make sure nothing went wrong. And it almost did. So reagan was gritting his teeth and nancy reagan was rolling her eyes and gorbachev was egging them on, i never forgave her for that and finally we god the feathers smooth and reagan gave a very good speech ashes lot of funny lines and 0 gorbachev gave a speech and said steve forbes tries to eckersley exploit me and everybody thought he was humorous and didnt know he meant it. You know. Glor it all worked out in the end. It did. My god. Glor talk a little bit as well about your brother, if you could. Because from you mentioned the online part of this. He played, has played a role in this. Yes. My brother tim, he recognized probably more than any of us what the web was going to do with, what the internet was going to do to print and we had to make adjustments. For example, in 20 years ago, when we went online, most publishers thought you put a printed page online, that was electronic publishing, which is like 120 years ago some people thought you filmed a stage play, and that was a feature film and movies were invented. No way. And so we had a separate building, separate staff, separate reporting lines and then we finally combined them after ten years, after the thing began robust, we most of our content was not from the magazine, most you could take most print websites today, most of it is already prepared in print there, 99 percent of ours isnt and my brother tim several years ago decided we were going to make the next move which is bringing o on this fellow lewis deboer kin as chief product officer and today our content, yes, we still print 1,000 articles a year, but online now we have over 1,700 contracted contributors, who will write in various areas of expertise so we virtually produce a magazine each day, and my brother glor you are terrible at selling the brand. You are good at it. My father brought me up well. He said sell, son, sell. Which brings us to the transition and the future as well, because randall you run the magazine now. Mike, you are president , so from your pe perspective what is fors and what do you want forbes to be . Yes. Well, forbes as steve said and i should start by telling anyone who is watching this, we no longer have scott week, so if you want to come work at forbes, there is no longer scotch week. There you go. We do have an occasional scotch but not a scotch week. But, no, forbes is this tremendous brand around the world. It is incredible, we have this mantra there to try to make our business as big it is a brand and people, including myself, dont recognize how incredibly wellknown around the world the brand is, and the potential there for growth. So that is how, you know, when you look at 100yearold, you know, the magazine and the history there which provides real journalism and gravitous, gravitas plus this new model of the Contributor Network which we are talking about which gives us this incredible sustainable scale, the combination of the two is really compelling. Yes, the magazine randall is still very important to we are actually at the highest print leadership in our 100 year history over the last few years so people are still reading the print magazine and the more we do great journalism in print, of course we are putting it right online and again through this incredible muscle through forbes. Com, i mean, we have last month we had 59 Million People according to com score, it is not a zero sum game which is the old media cliche you have a magazine or if you have a website it is going to take away, the the more success we have online the more success we are having in print, the more success we have in print the more online and translates to a lot of events, licensing, we have 38 foreign editions around the world it through shia global brand. Yo you are not shutting down Printing Presses . We again, we have 38 editions around the world and expanding Printing Presses if you look at the entire world but it is the forbes cover, it is funny because we have this 30 on 30 list which is kind of our new list, you know, the rich list, and if you ask a millennial and you, you know, first of all they all aspire to be on the cover of forbes one day and even if 0 you have someone participant and profile you they all ask the same question will it be in print . Because in an era where content is ubiquitous and universal, the fact that, you know, once a month there, once a month or so we take a step back and we put absolute great fact checked heavily researched, heavily edited journalism in a print magazine it still is very strong, a great window on our brand and again because of the frankly do great journalism. E people still want to see the cover and see their face on the cover. Something tangible. Of a magazine. They want something tangible. And we have probably more rap songs than any magazine in the world, and in some ways it plays off, forbes means success, and that is something that is universal and that is not a fad and it is not something that is just constrained to the united states, a and that is part of the strength we have right now. Steve, i find it interesting what mike said you are trying to make the company as big it is a brand. Yes. Tell us more about that. Well, we are in the media business, but in terms of the companies we often profile, multibillion dollars, zillion Dollar Companies we are not there yell, we are starting to move there, but one of the things around the world is because of the success of our brand, entrepreneurs feel that they we understand what they are trying to do, and so our task is now going into areas like education, natural we have a partnership now, we are going to be doing more of that, and in other areas, where they call it brand extension. But it is a natural. Glor so is forbes a Media Company, an education company, a tech company . What is it . It is primarily media in terms of information. We are providing you the tools to succeed in life by analyses, writing about others from whom you can learn, each force story tries to have a lesson, a little morality tale that you can take away, not just a piece of information but something, ah, that relating to something i am trying to do or want to do or did do, and so you feel you are getting something out of it more than just a piece of news or information. We say, again, from a business perspective, we are a global media, and branding company with technology at the center of what we do. That is kind of how, again, we approach the business, technology is driving distribution these days, these large audiences efficiencies in business plus other opportunities, but the Media Company plus the brand, which is quite unique to us, i think we have this incredible composition. And even 100th anniversary cover we have Warren Buffett the holding the original, the last remaining whole issue of Forbes Magazine, but we also have him coming off the cover in Artificial Intelligence and ai and have an information with Warren Buffett shooting off the cover so technology really being at the center, even of an old print magazine. I think this weeks issue has President Trump on the cover, right . Yes, inside trumps head. You talked to him. I did. How was that . 15 we shot that at the oval office at the resolute desk, jf confident, jfk and Ronald Reagan used, how is submit we have a forbes 400 as president now and someone we had a 35 years relationship with and again it shows the resonance of what we are covering, but, you know, he is making very interesting we have again a very long relationship with him and we were able to bring different perspectives i think. Who by your estimation is down in value. Yes, he is having a bad week, we have him down this week, forbes 400 came out and he with have him down 3. 7 to 3. 1 billion. New York Real Estate is down and also less people are going to his golf courses in part because people are voting with their pocketbook in terms of playing golf but we have a whole team, i mean, it is funny because people think, you know, where do these numbers come from and i did a year, on the forbes 400 we have a team of 20 people all they are doing is around the world, you know, getting under the hood and digging and hooking at records so this all had backup behind it. We have a cover here from 1990, which asks, how much is donald really worth . Yes. 27 years ago the question we are still asking the question. Who is being asked. Steve, how is it, these numbers are calculated . Whether it is donald trump or Something Else . Well, you at a first the public information, then you go into records, a lot of public records, a lot of competitors, banks off the record will tell you, if you dig, it is amazing what is out there, and then you two to the source themselves and say, sheer what we got, so we are in effect on to you, do you want to help us or do you want to hinder us . But we are going to do an estimate, and many people, most people end up cooperating. Now they are not always happy, we had several years ago we had a fellow call up hide dungeon berating us for it, he didnt dispute the estimate, he seemed we finally found out the reason he was in the middle of a divorce and his wife didnt know how much he was worth. True story. So people do have visceral reactions to these the numbers when they hear them, though . Yes, and even we find that even those we say oh i really dont want to be on it secretly see it as a badge of recognition. We, there are a lot of people who want to be higher, and there are people who want to be lower, and it is our job to check everybody, it seems like nobody is exactly happy about where they are which i guess is a metaphor for there is one way to get off the list we tell everyone because we all get it from time to time, how do i get off this list . And it is to five away your money. So if you dont have it it is irrelevant rec. Irrevocable. Well, you know what . It is not so bad to be on the list. How has that one of the things that this underscores is, wealth is not tangible stuff, it can change. A piece of equipment can be worth x today and zero tomorrow because of technology. And that is the amazing thing. It is really all about the mind. Not physical things. Glor but