Richard Beckman: Last of the Old-Style Media Moguls?

Richard Beckman says he's not particularly fond of Mad Dog, a nickname he earned as a sales executive at Condé Nast, the magazine publisher where he spent 24 years. He finds it demeaning, and says it is belied by the fact that he is actually shy and quiet. In several meetings, he does display an almost theatrical delicacy in the way he speaks and gestures, rotating his wrists in the florid manner of a magician. But there is a note of canine aggression in his voice when he calls from Aspen on Friday, Mar. 18. He is supposed to be on vacation, skiing with his family, but instead he's spent the day in crisis mode, his ear attached to his cell phone talking to his editors, magazine publishers, and his company's publicist. The has just printed a story declaring that investors in Beckman's one-year-old company, Prometheus Global Media, which owns , , , and other trade magazines, are scrambling to get out of their investment. For a man trying to reinvent an Old Media business, the last thing you want to read is that when your company forked over $70 million for eight publications in 2009, it "overpaid"—even when it's coming from an unnamed source in a newspaper that isn't necessarily known for its accuracy. Since Beckman and the investment partners issued firm public denials to the , who could the source possibly be? "I have no idea," he says, "but I'd love to wring their neck if I could find out."

The English-born Beckman is an archetype from a period that may never return, if it ever really existed: a salesman who made money fall from the sky during glossy magazines' heyday, accustomed to living high and celebrating his rough edges, if not his nickname. For decades he was among those responsible for turning magazines such as , , and into cash machines for Condé Nast, which publishes those titles and a long list of others. Now, Beckman has moved on from that magazine empire's glamorous Times Square cocoon of Town Cars and expense accounts and spends his days in far more modest offices downtown. (After suffering through a brutal ad recession, Condé Nast has moved on, too.) With Prometheus, Beckman is trying to repeat his success within the least glamorous sector of publishing—trade magazines—at a time when print has practically been given up for dead in some quarters. Not only is $70 million of other people's money at stake; so, it seems, is Beckman's reputation and the sense that he can be a successful visionary on his own.