James Ledbetter, R.I.P.

James Ledbetter, one of my contemporaries from the world of business journalism, has died at age 60. Inc. magazine reported he died of a heart attack. Ledbetter had worked for most major media publications and was deeply connected in the media world. I never met Ledbetter, who was the New York bureau chief of The Industry Standard, the seminal magazine that epitomized the dot-com bubble. I worked for Red Herring, which itself was a poster child of dot-com excess. Ledbetter wrote “Starving to Death on $200 Million: The Short, Absurd Life of The Industry Standard,” a book that is a must-read for all students of history, bubbles and, of course, technology. RIP.