Ned Desmond named President and Editor of eCompany Unlimited

Posted on October 25, 1999

Ned Desmond has been named President and Editor of a magazine and website to be launched by Fortune magazine in May 2000. The venture, with the working title eCompany Unlimited, will be based in Silicon Valley. The announcement was made by John Huey, Managing Editor of Fortune, and Jack Haire, President of The Fortune Group.

"eCompany Unlimited will fill a unique niche in business journalism as both a magazine and a Website, providing an interactive guide to doing business in the Internet age," Huey said. "Ned Desmond is the perfect choice to lead this venture. He has been at the journalistic crossroads of business and technology for years, as a reporter, editor, and Internet executive."

Desmond, 41, comes to eCompany Unlimited from Infoseek, where he was most recently Vice President of Centers and Content. He led the product teams that launched Infoseek Japan and more than a dozen new areas on the Infoseek site, including games, personal finance, computing, autos and health. Previously he was a senior writer at Fortune, covering both Silicon Valley and the Japanese economy. He also worked for 12 years at Time magazine, where among other positions he served as the Bureau Chief in New Delhi and Tokyo.

"The Internet has changed business by introducing new efficiencies and opening new markets, by collapsing time and space, and by putting everyone in any kind of business in much closer contact with buyers and suppliers," Desmond said. "eCompany Unlimited will bring the great journalism and writing inspired by Fortune to bear on how this revolution is unfolding in the real world of business. We will offer stories about the successes - and failures - at companies big and small as they come to terms with the e-commerce revolution."

Desmond says the editorial mix of eCompany Unlimited will include stories on creating an e-business, profiles of companies and their leaders, reviews of the latest digital equipment and products, and Internet investment ideas. The magazine will debut in May 2000 with an average paid rate base of 200,000 and a cover price of $3.95.