Six months before the first voter cast a single primary ballot, a clamoring press corps had all but given the Republican nomination to Colin Powell. But mostly Forbes smiled on Fortune. The article that Perlstine wanted and Huey delivered created more stir than anything Fortune had done in memory. According to Fortune, Forbes the man wasn't as interested in being president as he was in raising the circulation and revenues of Forbes the magazine. Of course, these supposed goals were not unlike those of Fortune's itself in pursuing the story, a point Forbes himself made when the article appeared in mid January.
Rivals become co-workers and vice versa as quickly as they change into sweats for morning workouts.
Time's Perlstine left the Wall Street Journal in the late 1970s to put in two years as a top Forbes editor. Then he rejoined the Journal, where he hooked up with John Huey before both men came over to Time Inc., Huey in 1988, Perlstine in 1994. The Fortune article itself draws crucially on the work of Willy Stern, a former Forbes writer now at Business Week, the third competitor in the big-time businsss magzine field. Steve Forbes, according to Kasindorf, would seek to surpass dad by bringing in more advertising business. The latest figures of the Publishers Information Bureau show how well Steve Forbes has done.