Inside.com was a website and trade magazine that covered "the converging worlds of entertainment, media, music and technology."[2] Launched with a great deal of hype in the spring of 2000,[3] Inside was a victim of the dot-com bubble and the early 2000s recession, and it closed down at the end of 2001. Company headquarters were in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan.[4]
The magazine/website is not related to the later Jason Calacanis startup Inside.com, which focuses on delivering thematic newsletters.[5]
Inside.com was co-founded by Kurt Andersen, Michael Hirschorn, and Deanna Brown (calling themselves Powerful Media)[6][3] in 1999, with the announced goal of helping to "reinvent a form, not unlike magazines at the beginning of the twentieth century, or even newspapers and the novel in the eighteenth and nineteenth."[6]
The company began with $12 million in financing[7] from Jim Cramer and Flatiron Partners, and added a second round of $23 million in May 2000,[8] prompting Andersen to famously proclaim that raising money for the site was "easier than getting laid in 1969."[4][9][3]
Starting with an "all-star" staff of 72 stocked by "old media" talent from the likes of Time, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, U.S. News & World Report, Disney, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, The New York Observer and Rolling Stone,[3] Inside.com launched in May 2000[8] as an online media news website. (Courtney Love attended the launch party.)[7]
Inside's internal "manifesto" was "Correctness. Insiderness. Juiciness. Utility. Honesty. Smartness. Go kill".[6] The site was divided into sections — "Inside Dope," "Daily Digest," "Power Index," "Ratings," "This Morning's Talk Shows," "Mogul Astrology," and "Today's Gossip";[3] subscribers were also promised data-driven lists of TV ratings, box office numbers, CD sales, and the like.[3] Subscriptions to the site were priced at $199 a year,[8][6] with an announced goal of 30,000 subscribers.[10][3]
Inside, the biweekly print magazine, launched in December 2000.[7]
The site was named Best Internet Site at the 5th Golden Satellite Awards (held in January 2001),[11] and also won the Webby for Best News Site in 2001.[12][13]
Things, however, soon turned sour for Inside. The site never got more than a few thousand subscribers, and like many other publications covering media and technology, the company couldn't figure out how to turn a profit.[6]
In April 2001, Inside.com was sold to Steven Brill/PriMedia (now Rent Group), who immediately canceled the print magazine (after only two issues)[6] and laid off 50 staff members.[4] At the same time, Brill announced he would merge the magazine with his own Brill's Content in the fall of 2001, with the new publication to be named Inside Content.[1][4] Instead, Inside editor-in-chief Hirschorn left in July,[10] and Inside itself closed down in October 2001, as Brill dissolved his partnership with PriMedia.[14]
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editors
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