WIRED MAGAZINE IS AIMED AT TECHNO-HEADS OF THE '90S

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, January 30, 1993                   TAG: 9301300158
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: JOHN ENDERS ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: SAN FRANCISCO                                LENGTH: Medium
WIRED MAGAZINE IS AIMED AT TECHNO-HEADS OF THE '90S
Finally! Now there's a magazine for the yuppie techno-head computer culture of the 1990s. "Wired" hit the nation's newsstands last week.
Calling itself "the authentic voice for the digital generation," Wired is housed in a brick-and-beam third-floor walk-up loft in a nouveau-chic area of San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood.
It's the brainchild of publisher-editor Louis Rossetto and president Jane Metcalfe, both from another hip magazine, "Electric Word," which formerly billed itself as "the least boring computer magazine in the world."
Not boring, Wired, with 16 or so staff members mostly in their 20s and 30s, includes entertaining and provocative writing. And it is permeated by a colorful art and design package that, while cluttered in its premier edition, promises to be a wake-up call to more staid publications.
It's put together by staffers wearing T-shirts and blue jeans, who 27-year-old managing editor John Battelle calls "techno-weanies." The office has a feel that's half graduate school classroom, half new-age cottage workshop.
With an initial press run of 150,000, Wired hopes to become the favorite read for those in the vanguard of what is touted as the 1990s convergence of computers, communications and media. Newsstand price is $4.95. A year's subscription now costs $20.
"The Digital Revolution is whipping through our lives like a Bengali typhoon, while the traditional media is still groping for the snooze button," said Rossetto, who at 43 is the old man-in-residence.
"We're entering the digital age, and our target audience is probably the fastest growing audience in the United States, and will continue to grow as more and more people become wired."
With support and $200,000 in start-up money from some high-powered friends - Nicholas Negroponte, director of the Media Lab at MIT and Silicon Beach Software founder Charlie Jackson - Wired plans to publish every other month until it goes monthly at the end of the year.
On the cover of the premier edition is an up-close picture of author Bruce Sterling by renowned photographer Neil Selkirk.
Inside its 112 pages are a cover story by Sterling on the military's use of virtual-reality technology to conduct war exercises, New York Times technology writer John Markoff on cellular phone hacking, and Lewis J. Perelman on the death of schools as we know them.
There's also an article by Karl Taro Greenfield titled, "The Incredibly Strange Mutant Creatures Who Rule The Universe of Alienated Japanese Zombie Computer Nerds."
Light fare for techno-freaks. Heady stuff for many readers.
"We don't have a lot of megabucks behind us," said Rossetti. "We had to supply some deep thought instead."
Wired's founders believe they fill a new niche and have no real competition, but Computerworld's Editor-in-Chief Bill Laberis says it'll be a while before the new boy on the block proves itself a winner.
"Publishing can be a helluva sinkhole," Laberis said.
Techno-nerds all around the country are coming out of the closet and uniting via computer bulletin boards into a new subculture, he said. There just might be a market for Wired, he added.
"It's almost fashionable to be a nerd these days."

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB