January 1985 The biweekly newsprint publication Information Systems News was converted to a weekly glossy paper magazine, InformationWeek, at the behest of its new publisher, Drake Lundell. The feeling was that as a newsprint publication, we were up against the entrenched market leader, Computerworld, while a weekly magazine would be in a category by itself. The entire staff of newspaper writers was suddenly, with no warning or training, turned into magazine writers. Several outsiders were added at the top of the masthead.

It wasn’t long after the new year that I realized that editor1 and his hand-picked outsiders, editor 4 and editor 5, along with veteran CMP editor 6, were driving the magazine into the ground with an endless copy loop―generated by incessant “queries” inserted into the copy as comments on the Atex. A story could not be run until all queries had been answered.

 Gradually, the more competent but less secure staff in New York began either quitting or retiring in place. I was so depressed I nearly resigned several times. Both editor4 and editor5 treated me like an idiot. “What is the matter with me,” I constantly asked myself and others. “I am a professional journalist. Can’t I learn to write magazine style?” Fortunately, I found other members of the staff were also feeling insecure, which made me feel better. I struggled through the spring.

MAY  1985

I returned from vacation to find things at the magazine even worse than before. Writer1 was stopped one day by Gerry Leeds, who asked how things were. She told the truth. Drake conducted an investigation; no one told him the truth. Finally, I called Gerry and told him he had a disaster on his hands.

 On a Friday afternoon at about 3, Gerry called editor1 into his office, talked to him for two hours about the future, then relieved him of the editorship. Editor1 left a cryptic message on the computer system, then departed for vacation, leaving an editorial entitled “Gone Fishin.”

Monday morning, Drake led a staff meeting and explained he would be acting as editor. Without asking anyone, I booked myself on the red eye that night and showed up at the staff meeting Tuesday morning. Editor6 conducted it, under Drake’s watchful eye. Editor4 resigned the week before, to take a job with Business Week. Editor5 was gone two weeks later. Editor6  stayed in place until August, until Larry King was ready to take over as managing editor. Then she was left. The art director stayed in place for two weeks, then walked out, leaving her successor with a shambles. Several issues only came out by the skin of our teeth.

   Drake faced a tough choice, whether to make editor2 or Larry King managing editor. He chose wrong. Larry, passed over, eventually left. As editor, to replace Drake, we got editor3, who looked and sounded like an editor, but had problems with substance abuse and paperwork. We spun our wheels. Editor2 and Editor3 engineered the firing of Writer1 after a few months of working for us in Chicago: a big mistake. I wrote most of the magazine single-handedly that July and August and later got a $1,000 bonus by way of thanks, as well as the first and only editorial employee of the year award, which came in 1986.