BOSTON - A former stockbroker with no previous publishing experience is pitting his new investment magazine against some of New England�s more established media as he trumpets the success of Massachusetts tech companies.
"There's this pervasive attitude that we're Number Two, behind Silicon Valley, and so nobody is telling the story of the great companies in this area - the wealth that's being created here," says Michael Stern, publisher of the Massachusetts Investor's Digest, which hit newsstands on 18 March.
Stern�s inspiration to start the monthly guide to investment opportunities in the Bay State arose while he was working as a Merrill Lynch broker. Many of his customers were wealthy high-tech executives who bemoaned the dearth of information about local investment opportunities.
Soon Stern was sketching out a publication focused exclusively on Massachusetts�s public and near-public companies worth watching. He funded the Digest partly with his own money, and partly with funds from a small group of private investors. His belief: Rumors of the death of Massachusetts' technology industry have been greatly exaggerated.
"Much of the national media, and even some of the local media, have been reinforcing this notion that Route 128 is history," said Stern, referring to the ring road around Boston that has long linked computer companies like Wang, Data General, and Digital Equipment. "The Boston Globe wrote about the sale of Digital to Compaq like it was the final nail in the coffin."
Joyce Plotkin, president of the Massachusetts Software Council, a trade group, concurs with Stern about what she calls the "lack of support" from the media.
But the Boston Globe�s business editor, Larry Edelman, defends his paper, saying that its coverage has simply changed with the times. "We don't think [Route] 128 is dead," Edelman says. "We just think it has morphed into something different. In the late '80s, we were covering big companies like Digital and Lotus. Today, our coverage is about hundreds and hundreds of small companies that aren't household names."
Edelman also pointed out one major challenge Stern�s Digest will face: "It's tough to do a monthly investment magazine when things change so quickly."
But local high-tech boosters like Plotkin and Leslie Smith, director of the Massachusetts Interactive Media Coalition, are pleased about the Digest's debut. "The investment community here has traditionally been very conservative," notes Smith. "With more media attention focused on what's going on here, it's more likely that we'll see some change."
"We don't toot our horns loud enough," says Plotkin, who adds that her organization conducted a study in 1997 that identified 2,500 software companies in the state employing 120,000 people. That's up from 800 companies employing 46,000 people in 1989.
The inaugural issue of the Digest contains profiles of Lycos, Open Market, and CMG Information Services, as well as a review of investment Web sites. Future issues, according to Stern, will focus on Boston brokerages, fund managers, the Boston Stock Exchange, and such decidedly low-tech companies as Gillette, the Boston Celtics, and Boston Beer Co., maker of Samuel Adams.
With any luck it will inform even non-Bostonian readers. As Stern points out: "[Former Fidelity fund manager] Peter Lynch says that investors should look in their own backyard for great stock. How many people know that Open Market is in Burlington, or that Lycos is in Framingham?"
