GUTENBERG MAGAZINE MODERNIZES  

Publishers of printed books, magazines and newspapers are realizing that the glory days are over. As they try new technologies, new distribution systems and different financing schedules, rapid changes are taking place -- and the survivors are already making giant steps.

Electronics magazine may be leading the pack. It's current issue comments that "It is no secret that business magazines covering the electronics industry are not doing well" ... value to the reader must be increased".

One of 30 trade publications in the Penton Publishing Group of Cleveland, Electronics has probably seen greater changes in the industry they were covering than some sister publications have seen in other fields. So Electronics and their parent company decided they would have to change drastically to survive. The shock in some quarters of the magazine must have been akin to being in the Vatican when they found out the earth circled the sun, instead of the other way around which had been gospel from the Mount long before the days of Galileo. Electronics came to the conclusion that electronics industry is now a global enterprise and that America was not necessarily the center of this new universe! Electronics says plainly "What American publications suffer from -- even those with editorial offices worldwide -- is the myopia of a U.S.-centric point of view". You have to be an American to understand how great a shock that can be, although most Americans still won't believe it.

Starting with their next issue Electronics is now carrying balanced industry news from three geographic areas: Asia, Europe and the U.S. To keep up with the speed of change, they have converted, to publishing twice-a-month. They are convinced that industry news, not features, is what their subscribers (many CEOs of small, medium and large electronic manufacturing companies) demand.

Other media should take note. In my seminars I continuously notice that major companies in many fields are woefully ignorant of what is going on in their own industries -- elsewhere in the world. New technological developments are not all coming from the U.S. anymore. It isn't so much that the U.S. is developing less, but that the rest of the world is innovating far more than ever before. In fact, American readers generally have been receiving less foreign news than Canadians, perhaps because of Canada's longer mixture of global ethnic cultures.

Electronics has chopped lead time on deadlines to be more "readerfriendly" by providing a fast-read format with a heavy use of color and capsule summaries, that will entice readers to scan each page (They even hired an outside company study the way readers' eyes scan a page of copy). They intend to follow Ted Turner and CNN by reporting on the news, as it happens. The fast-moving electronics field is a good place to start. The average shelf-life in Tokyo for a consumer electronic product -- is just 90 days.

Instead of the usual three-to-four-month monthly magazine deadline Electronics has reduced lead time to six weeks for major stories, four weeks for other stories, two-weeks for such late-breaking news as product introductions at a major trade show, and one-week deadlines for exceptional news. A big change from the past.

But perhaps most important, the magazine is fully utilizing such tools of the publishing trade as computers, electronic mail and fax machines. Although headquarters remains in Cleveland, two new editors are now in Japan, and one each in Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea. European staff will be boosted to three. This is in addition to regular correspondents in other world centres.

Almost all editorial staff is located outside of Cleveland. Chief editor Jonah McLeod is in San Jose, California. Senior editors Lawrence Curran and Jack Shandle are in Boston and Hasbrouck Heights, N.J., respectively. The Editor-at-large is based in New York. They converse by phone and fax and have a common mailbox on CompuServe's electronic network. Associate editors and the production editor elsewhere also work electronically to line up final production.

For any ripple-effect story, editors around the world will be consulted to monitor effects world-wide. This is exactly what the Japanese have been doing for the past 30 years ... acquiring intelligence, not merely gathering information. The difference is success. If Electronics carries this out, they will be deleted from the list of endangered species.

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