Reports Folio's Jason Fell:

I spoke with Spanfeller this afternoon and he denied reports that his leaving was pressured by Forbes investor Elevation Partners. "That's just crappy reporting," he said during a phone conversation. "Unless Elevation has the ability to stick thoughts and actions in my head, they had nothing to do with my decision to move on."

Spanfeller also denied reports that his departure had to do with declining traffic at Forbes.com. "That's even shittier reporting," he said. "Anyone with any tenure in the online space knows that different sources you go to for traffic numbers produce different results, and that's problematic at best. Even if one says we're down slightly over a couple of months, the truth is that Forbes.com is up from half a million uniques in 2001 to 18 million to 20 million today."

Spanfeller went on to say that he's launching a media firm that would manage publishers' websites at the end of the year.

Spanfeller to Take Equity Stake in Client Projects [Folio]

Jeff Bercovici of Daily Finance reports:

Spanfeller did not respond to messages, but his departure is thought by insiders to be a result of pressure by Elevation Partners, the private equity group that bought a large minority stake in Forbes three years ago. In May of this year, Elevation co-founder Roger McNamee resigned from the Forbes board and was replaced by Bret Pearlman, another Elevation Partners executive whose arrival was seen to herald a round of cost-cutting. Since then, rumors have circulated that Spanfeller's days were numbered, even though he is said to be favored by president/COO Tim Forbes.

Forbes CEO Steve Forbes announced the news in a memo to company employees tonight. In it he said:

Jim has done a monumental job of bringing Forbes.com to the lead position in business websites, and secured Forbes.com as the must visit site for not only global business leaders but also anyone interested in the finest business reporting and analysis available. At present Forbes.com has 18 million unique visitors a month.

Along the way, Jim has overseen the development and growth of Forbes Digital, which includes Forbes.com, ForbesTraveler.com, Investopedia.com, RealClearPolitics.com, RealClearMarkets.com, Real Clear Sports, and Forbes Business and Finance Blog Network, which together reach 40 million unique visitors a month.

This immense growth on the digital side of the business was spearheaded, pursed, and led by Jim with enormous success. The digital world is still uncharted with few rules, and Jim's intellect, creativity, and business acumen helped bring us our number one position. For this the Forbes family is very grateful and we wish him all the success in his future plans.

Nothing further is known at this time about who will replace Spanfeller or what his future plans are.

Sources Say Forbes.com CEO Stepping Down [Jeff Bercovici/Daily Finance]
Forbes CEO Jim Sapnfeller Out: Here's the Internal Memo [Peter Kafka/All Things D]

Already, Stewart Pinkerton, an old magazine hand who had overseen the integration of the magazine's newsroom with the Web team, is "retiring," though our sources believe he was actually forced out by Lavin, an ambitious Forbes.com editor who previously worked at the New York Times. Lavin's next target, according to a tipster, is Tom Post, an editor high on the print magazine's masthead, who's been "shut out of the decisionmaking process."

What journalistic accomplishment is Lavin best known for among the Forbesians? Trying to censor his son's high-school newspaper. In 2001, when Austin Lavin was being impeached as student government president at Walt Whitman High School in a Maryland suburb, Carl, then an editor in the Washington bureau of the New York Times, sent a letter to a school superintendent demanding that copies of a school newspaper detailing the trial be removed and that a school television-news segment about it not air. (Lavin told the Student Press Law Center that he merely raised privacy issues about the airing of the story.)

Austin Lavin now runs a startup, Myfirstpaycheck.com, which he has been busily promoting on Forbes.com.

Date: Fri, 27 Mar 2009 13:30:57 -0400
Subject: To all edit from Bill Baldwin

After nearly 20 years at Forbes, most recently as Managing Editor, Stewart Pinkerton has decided to retire next month after the completion of the edit staff merger, a process he's been deeply involved in for the past few months.

For a long time we have depended on Stew in many areas: getting the magazine out on time and under budget, recruiting new talent to the editorial staff and overseeing foreign licensee editions. In recent years he was also the bridge between magazine and online editorial staffs, smoothing the way for this year's integration.

Prior to Forbes, he spent 24 years at the Wall Street Journal, part of that as Deputy Managing Editor. There are a lot of great journalists who owe a first or an important stepping stone in their careers to a hiring decision by Stew. Among them: Mary Ellen Egan, Dan Hertzberg, Dennis Kneale, Laura Landro, Jane Mayer and Jim Stewart.

Stew has been an important colleague, and we are grateful that he'll continue his association with Forbes as a Contributing Editor. Please join me in thanking Stewart for his many contributions over the years. We wish him all the best in the years to come.

Bill Baldwin

Peter Kafka, a former Forbes.com editor, reports that 19 have been laid off from both the print and online sides. Other sources give a breakdown: 17 from print, chiefly those with the longest tenure and hence the highest salaries; and 2 from the Web, both recent hires.

Forbes and Forbes.com have been run separately since the late '90s, when the Forbes family hoped to make some quick cash by spinning out the dotcom in an IPO. The public offering never happened, but Forbes Media's split has persisted, exacerbated by turf wars and infighting. (Forbes.com did not want Dan Lyons, the magazine writer who turned into a superstar blogger as Fake Steve Jobs, to write for the website; he left for Newsweek last year.)

Plans to merge the two feuding operations first leaked in October. In November, the company, which is now part owned by the Forbes family and part owned by Elevation Partners, the private equity firm which counts U2 rock star Bono as a member, conceded in a memo to employees that a merger was afoot, and that decisions on cuts would be made in January.

It is a comedown for the magazine, especially. We have heard, but not yet confirmed, that the list-happy title has lost most of its junior reporters who served as factcheckers. And the print team, we're told, may move from its 60 Fifth Avenue headquarters to Forbes.com's dumpier newsroom at 90 Fifth Avenue, perhaps so Forbes Media can unload the more valuable real estate. (Not that it's a good time to sell Manhattan office space, which is likely why the move is still undecided.)

From: Steve Forbes
Sent: Mon 11/17/2008 2:20 PM
To: undisclosed-recipients
Subject: News

We want to let you know of a series of structural changes that will enable us not only to better weather the current economic torm, but to move ahead quickly and profitably when the global economies begin recovering. These moves will make our company highly competitive in an extremely tough environment.

One of the benefits of Forbes is precisely the ability to move nimbly and swiftly to respond to our clients and marketers in the way they want to do business. For these reasons we have decided to change the organization of our sales and marketing groups in the company. In making these decisions, we got enormous and valuable input from our own people, as well as the marketplace to best position Forbes Media.

Over the next few weeks, the sales and marketing groups of Forbes magazine and Forbes.com will be combined into three specific units under the Forbes Media umbrella. The purpose is to enable us to more sharply and effectively focus our resources and priorities in response to our audiences and marketing partners.

The first newly organized sales and marketing group is the Brand Intelligence Group. It will focus on the senior-most levels of our marketing partners. We will create consultative engagements with these executives to better connect our highly valuable audiences with our advertisers' core communication goals. This vital enterprise will be led by Kevin Gentzel, as President and Group Publisher of Forbes Media. Bruce Rogers, Chief Brand Officer, will lead the marketing and research arms of this effort. The Integrated Solutions Group, another newly aligned sales and marketing unit, will work to create integrated and custom solutions to access our unique audiences. These original programs will be cross-platform, content-based, with broad marketability. The Integrated Solutions Group will be led by Mike Woods, as President.

As always, the core of our client outreach will be our geographically dispersed sales teams. Now, though, we will organize these teams in regional business centers, that combine the talents of the Forbes and Forbes.com sales staff in the newly created Forbes Media Sales and Service Group. This initiative will position the Forbes brand as a true multi-media vehicle. The marketplace increasingly recognizes the necessity to utilize —precisely and efficiently — several platforms to achieve their objectives. The group will be led by Avery Stirratt and Robert Pietsch, who will serve as Co-Presidents and Chief Advertising Officers. Debbie Himmelfarb will serve as Vice President, Marketing to support this group's marketing programs.

The leaders of the newly established groups will report to The Office of the Chairman, which will consist of Steve Forbes, Chairman and CEO of Forbes Media; Timothy Forbes, President and COO of Forbes Media; and Jim Spanfeller, President and CEO of Forbes.com.

I want to thank the leadership of sales and marketing for their critical input in this valuable effort. We believe these bold moves will place us in a far stronger position to expand our historical lead in both print and on-line. In other areas of the company, the following changes will be implemented as well.

Conferences and events in the U.S. and Europe will now be part of sales and marketing programs.

Recently, the name of the overall brand of web properties and affiliated properties has changed to Forbes Digital. Included under the Forbes Digital umbrella are: Forbes.com; Investopedia.com; RealClearPolitics.com; RealClearMarkets.com; RealClearSports.com; the Forbes.com Business and Finance Blog Network; and ForbesTraveler.com. ForbesAutos.com will be discontinued.

We are also strengthening and expanding the editorial integration at both Forbes and Forbes.com. There has been a program to exchange talent between the web and the magazine in place for some time. These efforts have been successful, and we are in the midst of conversations to discuss ways to truly integrate the great talent in both organizations by sometime in early 2009.

In recognition of their considerable contributions to the magazine in the past year, I am elevating Stewart Pinkerton and Tom Post from Deputy Managing Editors to Managing Editors.

Before joining Forbes in 1990, Stewart spent 24 years at the Wall Street Journal, in a mix of reporting and editing positiions, including Deputy Managing Editor under Norm Pearlstine. He's a graduate of Princeton and has a J.D. from New York Law School.

Tom joined Forbes 11 years ago from ABC News. He has B.A. from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. from UC, Berekeley.

This masthead change won't result in any reassigments of writers. Stewart will continue to spend a lot of his time overseeing the contributions of print writers to Forbes.com and vice versa. That job is getting bigger; it is vital that magazine contributions to the Web go where they will deliver the most prestige and traffic. Tom will keep his stable of writers and have a large role in the development of cover stories. He has done much in the past two months to keep us on top of the news.

• Forbes.com superstar Lacey Rose will move to Los Angeles and will take the lead on the magazine's Celeb List.
• Scott Woolley, L.A. bureau chief, is moving back to New York to run a team there.
• Betsy Corcoran, who runs the Forbes.com team in the magazine's Silicon Valley bureau, is stepping back from editing to do more writing — but some in Forbesian circles think she might be interested in ousting Quentin Hardy, her replacement as the magazine's Valley bureau chief, as head of the combined print and Web operations in the Valley. Corcoran says, "No, no, no. Wrong."

Our tipster adds: "Please don't buy this bullshit about how nice things are between print and dotcom."

The ongoing intra-Forbesian unpleasantness aside, one big question looms over the coming reorganization: Who's going to run the whole show. Churbuck thinks Bill Baldwin, the magazine's editor, is brainy but clueless. Forbes.com editor Paul Maidment, insiders say, is just a "puppet" of the publisher, Jim Spanfeller, and Maidment's contract is up soon. We have a suggestion: Why not just make Bono, the rock star turned venture capitalist at Elevation Partners, editor-in-chief of the whole shebang?

How should I know? I work at Forbes. I'll be the last to know.

I'd heard rumors about .com getting a floor here, but rumors like that circulate all the time and never come true. If they did, we'd belong to Fox, the magazine and website would already have merged, we'd all be in one building Queens and Joe Nocera would be running the operation. I personally doubt Valleywag is well sourced here.

There are also rumors about Spanfeller making a power grab. But what else is knew? Those rumors have been around since he arrived. Sometimes they're true, sometimes not. Or perhaps sometimes he succeeds at getting more power and sometimes he doesn't.

I think the move might be true, and it might involve some shift in power, but the idea that there's a dramatic consolidation in the wind is almost certainly wrong. But that's just my opinion, your mileage may vary.

I do think putting the two staffs in the same building would do a lot to get print writers writing for the web and web writers writing for the magazine. But this is already happening. Maureen Farrell and Andy Greenberg both write for print, and Brian Caulfield had a cover. Nathan Vardi (print) did a list of the world's most wanted fugitives for the web. Mike Maiello just went from the magazine to the website.

If they do take over a floor of 60, I hope they bring their free coffee with them.

Literally, in the real-estate sense. In New York, Forbes is housed at 60 Fifth Avenue, while Forbes.com is at 90 Fifth Avenue. Now, the publisher is said to be taking a floor at 60 Fifth to house the dotcom reporters, while it clears out "deadwood long-timers." The new mandate: Everyone will write for both Web and print. Which sounds sensible — unless you work at Forbes.

What Forbes is not planning to announce: What sounds like a merger is really a takeover — by Forbes.com. Jim Spanfeller, the publisher of Forbes.com, will run the combined operation. "It's a massive coup, one that print people have long seen coming and long feared," says our tipster. As well they should: The editors of Forbes have long looked down on their Web brethren. Now they will be working for them.