June 28 2005 – Making The Final Deadline, Just Barely

June 28 2005 – Making The Final Deadline, Just Barely

When I first went to work for Electronic Design magazine in 1980, I was given the test and measurement beat. I covered companies such as Zehntel, GenRad, Teradyne, Hewlett Packard, Tektronix, Keithley Instruments, Biomation, and other names that escape me. Those listed had good public relations; those not probably didn’t. The other observation I’ll make about this list is that some of the names no longer exist—discarded in the wake of an acquisition; their names remembered by old guys like me. Finally, a look at the companies who still exist will inform the tech-business-aware reader that the companies were scattered all over the country: Northern California, Boston and its suburbs, Cleveland, the metropolitan areas surrounding Denver, and Beaverton, Oregon.

I was the test and measurement guy because I was the junior person on the staff and this category of electronic equipment is the least glamorous. The mention of oscilloscope and logic analyzer is sufficient to glaze over any normal person’s eyes. I found them interesting because for the earliest part of my professional life I used these instruments to troubleshoot malfunctioning computers and communications gear. What the X-Ray and CT Scanner are to doctors, test equipment is to an electronics technician. I had been covering the beat for the good part of a year when I asked to expand my beat to include computers and peripherals. Back then the number of new disk drive, printer, and computer companies being formed was too numerous to count.

By 1981, LA who had been editor of the magazine was now publisher. The new chief editor was LM, one of the few women editors of a technical publication at the start of the 1980s. LM had two executive editors, SR and SC. There was probably another but these three really drove the publication. LM gave me the go-ahead to take on the computer and peripheral beat and also asked me to look into the emerging communications market. Telephone companies were deploying fiber optical cable at a record rate. She also said she was about to make an offer to another editor who would take over the T&M beat. In the meantime finish up any projects and move on. The new editor would be on board ahead of the Wescon Show, a conference and trade show that moved between Los Angeles and San Francisco and happened the last week of September. It was 1981 and Wescon was held in San Francisco. I had been with the magazine for just over a year.

LM had hired the new editor almost a month before the conference and had given him the assignment to produce a special report on large test equipment systems sold to semiconductor chip makers and printed circuit board manufacturers. Twenty years ago, the printed circuit board manufacturing was still found in abundance in high tech centers of this country: California, Massachusetts, Texas, Illinois, Florida, Oregon and Washington. Now, it’s largely moved off shore to Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and now China. Test equipment manufacturers might not be perceived as glamorous but they certainly were major advertisers and Electronic Design was the magazine that reached the demographic these large companies wanted.

Magazine editors, those that I’ve known over time, are an eccentric lot. Most have a wide range of interests. One of my favorite editors of all times is BR, a man who reminds me of Hunter Thompson in manner of dress, sans sunglasses and attitude. BR was a nice nerd and a gentleman. In terms of technical knowledge he was the equal of any working engineer in the field of broadcast communications—he understood the world of analog, which might account for his eccentricity. Digital is very deterministic. The result is always a “1” or a “0”. Analog is full of maybes. Like most editors, a gray flannel suit. Gucci loafers, and a designer tie did not fit him well. And neither was he fluent in the language—one full of overused superlatives. The language editors speak and tend to have few if any of the same words. Editors like BR tend to be contrarians with a suspicion of any claim of first, best, etc.

However, in trade publishing, editors are commodities marketed along with the circulation of the magazine. This is a natural result of giving away editorial and charging for access to the reader demographic the magazine reaches, the business model of all controlled circulation magazines. Advertisers pay all the cost of producing and distributing a trade magazine. (What remains once all these costs are covered is profit.) And editors are overhead, who increasingly have had to do more than interview contacts, attend press briefings, and write stories. Their role was beginning to include promoting the magazine to advertisers and media buyers within advertising agencies. Some are up to the task, others not. BR, for example, took a turn at it with some success.

In addition to schmoozing advertisers, editors are called into service to be industry luminaries, experts who appear on or moderate panels at trade shows. At every conference I’ve attended there are a handful of editors—typically the magazines’ chief editors, who are making presentations or moderating or participating on panels held at these events, Those who are not good at it—the natural introverts who speak through their written words you’ll find in the press room rummaging through press releases, interviewing company spokespeople, industry analysts, or experts in the field.

There are a few editors I’ve known—the number I can count on one hand—who are more reclusive than their peers, who like working from home. After years of building up a reputation as a “good” editor they can bestow or debunk a manufacturer’s claim and have the readers take notice. These few come and go as they please as long as they make their deadlines and produce compelling editorial. LM had put her new hire—I’ll call him Herb, not his real name—into that category: eccentric editor who produced copy on deadline and did most of his interviewing by phone—back then e-mail was non-existent. However, he started missing deadlines—the first no one noticed, the second raised a red flag. But most upsetting of all was he couldn’t be reached by phone, at which point LM started getting really worried.

She turned to the human resources department at the company to find where Herb lived in Southern California. He was hired to work out of the magazine’s office near LAX, but told her he could work from home most days. He had never gone into the office, thus no one had any idea of whom this person was. Only LM and SR had ever met him during their face-to-face interview nearly two months before. Human resources did manage to locate a next of kin, his daughter, who LM finally reached and the awful truth was finally revealed. Herb had a nervous breakdown and was under a doctor’s care. By this time, all the deadlines had passed. Now, the magazine had been composed and there was a hole where Herb’s article was to go.

I got the call from LM on Friday the weekend before the magazine was to be sent out for film the following Monday. She said, “I’ll pay you real money to produce 4000 words with three color picture over the weekend. She said she needed the copy and pictures by Monday morning. Could I do it? I said I could. I was familiar with the topic. In the run up to Wescon, I had been contacted by the product managers of a number of T&M companies. They wanted me to come by and see what they were doing. Rather than refer them to the new guy, I said I would listen to their pitch but they also needed to tell their story to Herb. These were all contacts I had cultivated over time and I wanted to accommodate them. I never knew when I would be back on the T&M beat. I had a notebook of good interviews detailing all the latest developments on the newest machines from the major players.

After our traditional Friday family dinner—IM and I and the two girls went to the Lion & Compass in Sunnyvale, I went to the den and began cranking out double-spaced, typewritten copy from a Smith Corona electric typewriter. By Sunday evening I had LM’s 4000 words on 15 double-spaced typewritten, Snopaked pages. In addition I had two 4-by-5 color transparent of new printed circuit board testers, and one 8-by-10 color print of a brand new semiconductor tester. A 9-by-12-in. brown envelope contained my weekend’s work and color photography sandwiched between two sheets of cardboard. I had drug-store copies of the originals at home as well as back-up color pictures if by some twist of fate the package failed to arrive at EWR, Newark International Airport 20 miles from the magazine’s New Jersey headquarters at 50 Essex Street in Rochelle Park at 9:00 AM Monday morning. LM planned to be at the baggage claim area waiting for the package when it arrived.

I was on my way to SFO at about 10:30 Sunday evening, October 4, 1981. Forty minutes later I parked in short-term parking on the other side of the access road from the terminal and walked across the pedestrian sky bridge to the ticket counter of United Air Lines. I purchased a $50 ticket for my small brown package and the ticket agent put it on the conveyor belt bound for United Airline Flight 136 departing midnight nonstop for EWR. The agent then gave me a receipt and I went home to enjoy what was left of my weekend—about six hours sleep. I was up at 7:00 AM, on Monday morning. When I got into the office I called and LM confirmed the package had arrived and that SR was busy getting it edited and ready for shipment: crisis averted. We never found out what became of Herb.