Putin scares Conde Nast
By Techgirl

Conde Nast owns New Yorker, Vanity Fair, GQ, Vogue and Wired.  Vogue and GQ are popular in India.

For techies in America, Wired magazine is an icon.  Wired is credited with correctly predicting global trends like open source, outsourcing and the new free culture of the internet. According to Wikipedia, Wired coined the terms ‘New Atheism’ and ‘Crowdsourcing’.  This computing magazine has won every award in USA.  Its journalists embody the spirit of the internet – free flow of information, freedom, open to new ideas and showing truth that powerful forces want hidden.

Wired journalists would be squirming to learn that their owners Conde Nast spiked a story in the Russian edition of GQ which was critical of Russian strong man and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Conde Nast went further by not publishing the article online in USA.  

The GQ article written by respected war journalist Scott Anderson did not have anything dramatically new, but it ran the risk of harming Conde Nast business interests in Russia.  Scott is not pleased and told NPR: "If you're worried about repercussions and you bow to them, you're basically surrendering to the other side."

By now, Conde Nast may have realized that techie journalists and high fashion are not a natural combination. And if you try to ‘kill’ a story in this connected world, you only ensure more people will clamor to read it.

Techgoss note:  Techgirl is a senior Tech journalist who reports on the IT, KPO and KPO Sectors for a leading media house.  In her spare time, she dabbles in satire in her blog http://techgirltalk.blogspot.com