Forbes Media president Mike Federle says there is much to fear but also reason to be positive now the tetchy tycoon is president

Among the many publications that have covered Donald Trump’s long career in the public eye, few have done so as consistently as Forbes magazine. The US president first appeared in the business title’s inaugural list of the America’s 400 richest people in 1982, and stayed there for much of the subsequent three and a half decades.

But while it seems a natural fit between a magazine that celebrates success and a man who seems obsessed with claiming it, it is a relationship that has had its fair share of friction.

“When we come out with the new list, several times over those decades we have written large stories on him,” says Forbes Media’s president and chief operating officer, Mike Federle, a couple of days before Trump’s inauguration. “This year we wrote a big one, because he was the presidential candidate, claiming [to be worth] $10bn, and we said it was more like $4bn.”

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Trump has disputed Forbes’s evaluations of his wealth repeatedly over the years, leading its chief product officer, Lewis Dvorkin, to write a column titled “forever frenemies” in a 2015 issue, which featured Trump on the cover and an interview with the man himself conducted by the editor, Randall Lane.

The frenemy relationship seems likely to continue, with Forbes expecting to tackle the uncertainties around what Trump’s presidency will mean for its readers in a similar way to the rest of the media, albeit with a less political bent.

“We have a group of journalists who are working on the Trump beat,” says Federle. “It’s not to build him up or take him down in any way, it’s to translate his business policies and his policy effect on business.

“A lot of news companies are creating a Trump desk, and I think it’s to address the total question mark that exists there. There’s a lot to fear on what he has said, on the economic front, and obviously there’s a lot that could turn out really well.”

“The reporting is more around the question mark that exists around his administration. Can a businessman, ‘the greatest businessman in the world’ or the best or whatever he would say, can he actually pull off some of this stuff he said?”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Trump has taken issue with Forbes’s evaluation of his wealth in the past. Photograph: Paco Anselmi/PA

The magazine was founded by Bertie Forbes almost 100 years ago, and controlled by the family until they sold a majority stake to a Hong Kong-based private equity group in 2014 for more than $300m. The founder’s grandson, Steve Forbes, is today the editor-in-chief.

But while many equally venerable competitors have stagnated, in recent years Forbes has moved in two very innovative directions, one of which bears a striking resemblance to Trump’s own business model.

Like many magazines, Forbes has licensing deals with partners who publish versions around the world, but the company has also taken brand extension further than almost any other.

In the Philippines, there was a recent deal to put the Forbes name on a tower in Manila’s Makati district, which also incidentally contains a Trump tower as well as others bearing the names of the fashion labels Armani and Versace.

There is also a branded education business with a for-profit provider based in San Diego, though with regular input from Forbes, it appears to offer slightly more value than Trump University.

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It is almost surprising the company as yet has no plans to follow Trump in putting its name on steaks, though there was a Forbes wine club.

It is an approach that Federle, who joined in 2011 and took over day-to-day running from the chief executive, Mike Perlis, last summer, says Forbes is especially well suited to.

“Forbes is a really terrifically elastic brand. It’s business, it’s finance investing, it’s lifestyle luxury. If you distill it down to one word, it’s success. That brand lends itself to both business opportunities and lifestyle opportunities.”

In 2010, Forbes launched its contributor network, which allowed anyone with an area of expertise to apply to publish direct to Forbes.com. After being vetted, contributors get paid based on traffic, and those in Europe also receive a flat fee. That year, Forbes also launched BrandVoice, which gave advertisers access to a similar platform.

There are now about 2,000 contributors on the network, generating more of Forbes’ online traffic than its full-time editorial staff of under 100, while BrandVoice has attracted upwards of 140 partners.

Although only a handful of contributors are thought to make a living off their pay cheques from Forbes alone, many see it as a convenient way to build a profile. And while Forbes’ “channel editors” take only a light-touch approach, Federle says the system takes advantage of the web’s natural self-policing.

“It’s part of the nature of the internet,” he says. “You spell a name wrong in an article, someone says, ‘You dope, you spelled a name wrong’, and then you quickly can change it. If you get a key concept wrong, then you stimulate big debate.

“In theory, it creates better journalism in the long run, in that you have a lot of editors. And I am talking in theory. We are in the evolutionary process of where journalism shifts.”

Over the next year, Forbes plans to begin rolling out a new content management system better suited to mobile devices and social media, with a wider range of formats including graphs and video content.

Driven largely by Dvorkin, Forbes has become a digital innovator, coinciding with an editorial shift away from a more straightforward focus on wealth and business to encompass what Federle describes as “entrepreneurial capitalism”.

“Forbes has throughout its history been about free markets,” he says. “That is basically what we are still about, but more and more we’re covering entrepreneurial wealth. That’s the big shift, the whole world has become interested in innovations and change agents, people upsetting industries.”

Part of that shift has been the magazine’s 30 under 30 list, aimed explicitly at the up and coming. The expansion of the list this year to include multiple categories and as many as 600 individuals in the US, and half that number in Europe, has been greeted with understandable scepticism, but Federle defends the move with reference to those who get name-checked.

“We are really creating a community and these guys are incredible with how they network with each other,” says Federle, speaking before heading to the 30 under 30 Europe launch party in Camden Market in London. “I understand the cynicism, or snakiness online. But I tell you, you talk to these guys, it is life-changing to the guys we put on. For somebody with a startup they get more financing, they get speaking engagements, people calling wanting to partner with them. More and more of them will phone us up and say: ‘Hey, you really changed my life.’

“We are trying to identify the generation that will be really driving business and policy and change over the next 50 years.”

While Forbes is out identifying the young people who are likely to shape the next half-century, there is greater uncertainty than ever before about what even the next four years will look like. Of particular interest to Forbes’ free-market friendly readers will be the president’s approach to globalisation.

Federle is aware of Trump’s rhetoric on the topic, much of it hinting at a more projectionist stance, but remains unsure what it will result in: “Trump is [about] free markets with his spin on it, which is my market first and then every other one be afraid. That is a change, and I think it will be interesting to see,” he says.

“Everyone is talking about what the future is going to look like under Trump, and I think everyone agrees no one knows.”

CV

Age 57

Education Tulane University: 1977-79; Colby College: 1979-81

1999 Publisher at Fortune magazine

2006 Group publisher at Time Inc business and finance network

2009 CEO at B2B Networks

2009 Group publisher at Bonnier Mountain Group

2010 President and COO at Techonomy Media Inc

2011 COO at Forbes Media

2016 President and COO at Forbes Media

