June 3, 2005 – Hanging out with “A Mover & A Shaker”

June 3, 2005 – Hanging out with “A Mover & A Shaker”

I first met LA shortly after I joined the Advertising and Public Relations Company in Palo Alto in the fall of 1977. He was the semiconductor editor with Electronics Magazine, which was then owned by New York-based McGraw Hill. He arrived at the magazine through a roundabout route. He owned a bar somewhere in Greenwich Village, living the bohemian life, with a new wife. When not tending bar, he submitted pieces to literary publications in the Village. A few were picked up. He said he sold the bar when he realized he didn’t want to watch his regulars slowly kill themselves. When he went looking for a real job, he applied to Electronics and got called in for an interview, shortly afterwards.

One of the editors he interviewed with was a guy named SK, a brooding hulk of a man, who seemed at once to be the epitome of quiet calm and at the same time always on edge. His handsome Eastern European face would occasionally brighten momentarily into a smile. He was soft spoken, almost a whisper, except when angered; then his voice would boom. SK was a man of few words and I found myself talking constantly when I was around him, our exchanges interspersed with an infrequent short sentence or a smile from him. When SK interviewed LA for the opening at Electronics and saw LA’s resume, he reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a small literary publication containing an article by LA. He asked if LA was the author and LA said yes. SK smiled and the interview was over. The oddity was that two guys in a technical magazine were linked by a literary publication that probably already had ceased publishing. I mention SK because he would become one of LA’s right hand men.

Though LA lacked extensive writing experience, he had a Physics degree—I forget from where—and he had incredible charm. He made you feel as though you and he were “simpatico,” kindred spirits that knew how the world worked. He turned that charm on me during our first meeting. I would have done anything to help him and I probably did, giving him access to any of the executives of my largest client, the Silicon Valley semiconductor giant, providing him first choice of any of the newest products coming out of my clients. It was a solid PR decision because back then he wrote for the premier technical magazine in the industry. A high tech company would have given anything to be featured in the publication. Its paid circulation included the heads of all the up and coming high tech companies of the 1970s. Its readers also included Wall Street analysts and general media and newspaper journalists wanting to keep up on the latest developments in the emerging computer industry.

The president of the PR firm had a simple strategy when it came to generating a buzz about his clients. Get an article in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Electronics and the rest of the media will come asking for follow-on stories. LA was the man to get at Electronics to affect this strategy. In the late 1970s, there was a separation between advertising and editorial—the line these days have become a bit blurred, especially in trade magazines. PR account executives and market managers or VPs would plead for appointments with editors at Electronics. And trying to get the editor to do a large piece on some product or business alliance your client was doing was like pulling teeth with nearly every editor at Electronics except LA. With him, he would give you what you wanted but would extract a favor at some later date.

Writing was not a solitary endeavor for LA, more a collaboration. His stories were not so much written as spoken. He would walk about talking while an associate would write down what he said. Once they had his brain dump on paper, the two would work out the structure and the flow. When the piece was in good enough shape, it would get put into the editorial process at Electronics, which meant nearly every sentence would be evaluated, rearranged, replaced, or reworded. One articles editor at the publication was notorious for working into the night—a common practice among articles editors—on a piece that would be returned to the writer with comments—chastisements for bad logic or sloppy construction—and lots of questions to clarify facts, assertions, or speculations by either the writer or someone quoted in the piece. LA knew that whatever he turned in would be made readable, understandable, and accurate. When I later went to work for LA—he hired me on more than one occasion—I realized that he had no great passion for the subject matter about which he wrote. It was more a means to an end.

A milestone on the way to that end occurred sometime in early 1978. I had been working at the agency since the fall of 1977. LA had been wooed away from Electronics to join its arch rival, I’ll call it Design for short, across the Hudson River in New Jersey. Design is still being published today. When LA took the editorial helm at Design, his goal was to unseat Electronics as the premier magazine in the high tech world. However, the high tech world was going through a major change. In addition to the handful of older publications that were serving readers in this community, there was a proliferation of new magazines being formed: Byte, Interface Age, and Personal Computing among 100s of others. The first three I mentioned have long since ceased publication.

These magazines were less interested in what technical widgets went into building a computer—though later on they became more interested—and far more interested in what the computer could do. The thousands of companies being formed to supply product for the home computer market were supporting these publications. Many computers labeled home computer were evolving into microcomputers that competed with expensive minicomputers being sold to medium and to small size businesses. Microcomputer had a price tag under $10,000 while minicomputers were selling for ten times that price. The number of widget makers—the advertisers Electronics and its five to eight rivals, were competing to woo—was growing at a far slower rate. For nearly 60 years, Electronics had managed to stay relevant to each new generation of electronic technology coming into the market. Now, its position as the premier publication was being challenged not only by its rivals, but by the onslaught of new magazines with entirely different editorial charters. The latter would eventually wreck havoc on all the older established publications—eventually contributing to the death of Electronics.

LA’s strategy at Design was simple, attack Electronics where they were vulnerable. A major vulnerability was their unwillingness to bargain for editorial coverage. And the most coveted editorial coverage a company could hope to receive was the cover story in an issue of the publication. Electronics was known for running covers on new technology and new products, but they would turn down many requests before one came along they felt deserved a cover. Though it was never explicitly stated, LA’s strategy was that major advertisers, making a cover request, should be given consideration. It was a successful strategy and it began to bear fruit almost as soon as LA joined Design and started driving its editorial direction.

LA hired me in the spring of 1980 and he introduced me to East Coast publishing and to his bohemian world. He and his family had a loft on Bethune Street. To access the loft, meant riding up two floors, in an aging elevator . I can’t remember the light in the elevator ever working. He also had a small farm in upstate New York that I visited at least once. I really liked LA and enjoyed hanging out with him. And I miss not having him around. I’ll tell you more about him in another entry.