about  /   archives  /   contact  /   subscribe  /   twitter    
Share this entry
Make this entry better

What are we missing? Is there a key link we skipped, or a part of the story we got wrong?

Let us know — we’re counting on you to help Encyclo get better.

Put Encyclo on your site
Embed this Encyclo entry in your blog or webpage by copying this code into your HTML:

Key links:
Primary website:
wired.com
Primary Twitter:
@wired

Wired is a monthly American technology magazine published by Conde Nast.

Wired was founded in 1993 by a group, led by Louis Rossetto and Jane Metcalfe, that became known as Wired Ventures. In 1998, Rossetto and Metcalfe lost control of the magazine to a group of investors who sold it to Conde Nast.

In 1994, Wired launched HotWired, the first commercial web magazine, which eventually was renamed Wired News. Wired News was sold to the search engine Lycos in 1998, shortly after the magazine was purchased by Conde Nast. For eight years, Wired News was owned by a different company from Wired, despite being the magazine’s online presence. In 2006, Conde Nast bought Wired News, though the magazine and its website remain separate entities.

While Wired.com had languished over its last few years under Lycos, its traffic rose quickly under Conde Nast. The magazine’s circulation has steadily increased over the past decade, though its ad pages declined sharply in early 2009. They had flattened by 2012, while digital advertising revenue equaled print for the first time.

Wired Digital also runs the social news website Redditbought by Conde Nast in 2006 — and the popular tech blog Ars Technica, a 2008 Conde Nast purchase. Wired’s U.K. division also runs a consulting division.

While Wired was critically acclaimed in both the 1990s and 2000s, it reinvented itself for mainstream audiences under editor Chris Anderson after the dot-com bust of the early 2000s, going from a strictly tech-oriented magazine to more of a culture-of-tech magazine.

Wired has been praised for its innovative design and trendy tone, though it has also been criticized for the split between its print and online divisions.

Wired released its much-anticipated iPad app in May 2010. The app was initially free, with single issues costing $3.99. The April 2011 issue was made free as part of a sponsorship deal with Adobe. In May 2011, Conde Nast announced a deal with Apple that would allow in-app subscriptions for its magazines, including Wired. In-app subscriptions were available for Wired starting with the June 2011 issue. The app had 84,000 subscribers in the second half of 2012, putting it in the top 25 of magazines overall.

Assignment Zero

In March 2007, Wired launched Assignment Zero, a citizen-journalism project focused on crowdsourcing in various areas of modern life. The project, run in conjunction with NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen, was one of the first large-scale crowdsourced journalism efforts ever attempted.

After encountering serious logistical and organizational difficulties with its more than 800 volunteers, the experiment folded that July after producing about 80 essays, interviews, and stories.

Video:

Founder Louis Rossetto on Wired’s history

Peers, allies, & competitors:
Recent Nieman Lab coverage:
Feb. 28, 2013 / Joshua Benton
“We’ve spent the past 10 years trying to make Wired more Condé Nast. We’ll spend the next 10 trying to make Condé Nast more Wired.” — Good profile of new Wired editor Scott Dadich by Joe Pompeo at Capital New York. The Lubbock, Tex. native’s meteoric rise was a product of his ability to dazzle his bosses, first as the precocious 24-year-old art direc...
Aug. 24, 2012 / Mark Coddington
This Week in Review: Twitter’s ongoing war with developers, and plagiarism and online credibility — Plus: Niall Ferguson and the fact-checking debate, The New York Times' new CEO, and the rest of the week's big media and tech news....
July 24, 2012 / Justin Ellis
Knight Foundation funds new projects for fact-checking and transparency — Several of the new projects first popped up through the last round of the Knight News Challenge....
June 29, 2012 / Mark Coddington
This Week in Review: News Corp. breaks up, and CNN and Fox News’ breaking-news gaffe — Plus: Pulse and Flipboard's competing news aggregation models, BuzzFeed's attribution issues, and the rest of this week's media and tech news....
June 21, 2012 / Ken Doctor
The Newsonomics of the shiny, new wrapper — Publishers are getting more aggressive about repackaging their work into ebooks, iPad magazines, and other new forms, in the hopes of creating something readers will pay for....

Recently around the web, from Mediagazer:

Primary author: Mark Coddington. Main text last updated: March 7, 2013.
Make this entry better
How could this entry improve? What's missing, unclear, or wrong?
Name (optional)
Email (optional)
Financial Times logo

Financial Times is an international business newspaper based in London. The FT was founded in 1888 and has been owned since 1957 by the British publishing conglomerate Pearson, which also owns a 50 percent stake in the British foreign-affairs magazine The Economist. In late 2012, a change in Pearson’s CEO led to suspicions that the…

Put Encyclo on your site
Embed this Encyclo entry in your blog or webpage by copying this code into your HTML:

Encyclo is made possible by a grant from the Knight Foundation.
The Nieman Journalism Lab is a collaborative attempt to figure out how quality journalism can survive and thrive in the Internet age.
Some rights reserved. Copyright information »