Media had well over 400 employees, and published magazines that sometimes exceeded 300 pages. The magazine last year published 7,558 advertising pages, a record in the U.S publishing industry, propelling the company to revenues in 2000 of more than $140 million.
The company started, and subsequently shutdown, two other publications: Grok, a monthly magazine focused on particular segments of the Internet Economy, and The Industry Standard Europe. It also held a series of high-profile conferences that featured appearances by a parade of tech industry superstars, including Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com, John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins, Steve Ballmer of Microsoft, Gerald Levin of AOL Time Warner, Masayoshi Son of Softbank and well-known analyst Mary Meeker.
But the bursting of the Internet bubble and the broad downturn in the advertising market took a considerable toll on the magazine and its related Web and conference operations. Prior to filing Chapter 11, Standard Media management had been negotiating for additional financing with its majority investor, the trade magazine publisher International Data Group, as well as with a group of venture capitalists that had invested $30 million in the company in late 1999.
The collapse of those discussions led to a decision by the company's board to suspend the magazine's publication.
