Forbes Media’s rank and file have reacted to McNamee and Elevation with cautious optimism, mainly because the investment has allowed the company to add staff—an uncommon thing at a news organization these days. And while McNamee is characteristically hands-on as a board member, he is not perceived as a meddler in the newsroom—at least not yet. Carl Lavin, formerly a top editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer, became Forbes.com’s managing editor in October. Six weeks later, he still hadn’t met or spoken to McNamee.

There has been much speculation that Elevation’s investment in Forbes will lead either to the sale of the company or an initial public offering. Tim Forbes, the company’s chief operating officer, confirms only that a liquidity event is coming, saying that “it will be in the window defined in the agreement—anywhere from five to 10 years.” He also says the Forbes family has the right of first refusal to buy Elevation’s stake if the firm decides to sell it. “They have the right to put, we have the right to call,” he says.

Elevation has an estimated $850 million left to play with, and it plans to make two to four more investments over the next three years. McNamee rejects the “strategy drift” charge, countering that Elevation’s lack of entertainment investments is due to economic considerations, not strategic ones. When Elevation first began shopping for companies in 2005, the credit market was still strong, emboldening other suitors for the entertainment properties Elevation was looking at and driving prices higher than the firm was willing to pay.

Sources confirm that it stepped away from a potential deal with Take Two Interactive, the videogame developer behind the controversial (and lucrative) Grand Theft Auto franchise, deeming the price too high. Elevation has also tried to get into music publishing but has been stymied, McNamee says, by the industry’s resistance to change. There is one potential music investment that Elevation has “worked on continuously since the beginning,” he says, “and I don’t think we’re any closer to it today than we were then.” And when Priscilla Presley contacted Bono and floated the idea of selling the Elvis estate, Elevation investigated but took a pass. (Presley later sold to entrepreneur Bob Sillerman, who paid $100 million for 85 percent of the estate.)

“That was a very good sign,” says one Elevation investor, who calls that sum “ridiculous.” Elevation, he continued, has “not lowered the bar in order to fill the fund with high-profile, sexy stuff. Private equity people usually do the opposite, because they want to raise the next fund and layer the next fees on top.”

Elevation prides itself, of course, on doing things private equity people don’t usually do. At times, this can make you wince. When Elevation announced its Forbes investment in 2006, some observers questioned both the whopping price tag and how “a magazine that celebrates wealth and consumption,” as the New York Times put it, jibed with the firm’s investment goals. More than a year later, some still cite McNamee’s response—he was quoted, in reference to plans to bolster Forbes.com, as saying, “The way you solve poverty is giving people the tools to overcome it”—as evidence of Elevation’s preciousness. (Said one skeptic, “Does he really believe Forbes.com is addressing the suffering in sub-Saharan Africa?”)

McNamee can live with that.

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