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February 1997, Vol. 8, No. 2
Inside vs. outside
Who has more insight: those from within or from without?
Components: The WAV word processor embedded into the CyberDog web browser illustrates OpenDoc
ORLANDO, Fla. -- In this industry, professional publishing systems for newspapers and magazines, we sometimes decide we're a little too insular.
And whether it’s a publisher hiring a data processing chief who has no industry background or a supplier’s board of directors bringing on a top executive with plenty of managerial ability but no publishing smarts, we project that this individual will become our savior, easily solving the numerous problems that have vexed us for oh, so many years.
Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. When you're having to teach someone the business, both you and the newcomer pay with a certain amount of downtime.
"I was so happy when [blank] came into the industry," someone said to me at the Newspaper Association of America’s SuperConference here last month (does it matter whether this person said Digital Equipment Corp., Electronic Data Systems, IBM’s Issc or Unisys?). "They really know how to get things done and they'll be able to set this industry straight."
Though suppliers coming from other industries have had their successes, some have had just as many -- more? -- failures. There is no substitute for good, on-the-ground experience that comes from working in the composing room, taking ads or sitting on the copy desk.
I certainly waver on this issue, but right now I'm saying that if I were a publisher, I'd rather have a former copy editor running my computer services (or MIS or IT or whatever you call it) department over the former computer services director of a retail firm.
And as for supplier firms? Well, interestingly, at this frozen moment in time, the lead executives at all the major companies (Atex Media Solutions, Harris Publishing Systems and System Integrators) have little -- or no -- publishing background. I don't know what to make of this except that it’s tough to be a supplier in this business and those with previous publishing backgrounds hadn't done well in those positions.
Inside, we offer more on our Inside vs. Outside conundrum:
At Macworld Expo last month in San Francisco, Correspondent George Powell not only found some interesting technologies (try a $299 educational device strikingly similar to the old Tandy Radio Shack Model 100 laptop, and OpenDoc, Apple’s version of component architecture), but he also found an outsider (Apple CEO Gil Amelio) reaching out to a (former) insider (NeXT Software’s Steve Jobs).
Creating conversion tools that produce HTML (the language of the World-Wide Web) is a task undertaken by both traditional industry suppliers and those with little or no publishing background. Correspondent Marion J. Love guides us through a bunch of these products, explaining what they do and how they do it.
The aforementioned SuperConference provided an ultimate illustration of the inside/outside complex: The keynote speaker, from Microsoft, mentioned newspapers only briefly in his remarks; the following speaker, a former newspaperman who is now with Apple Computer, energetically addressed issues facing newspapers and supply companies.
I take a look at both sets of comments, as well as those made by the chief executives of CNI Corp., Euromax, Linotype-Hell and System Integrators.
In the Hellbox, we have the latest on changes instituted by the new chief executive at SII, word of Unisys' first newspaper system sale in the United States and a hefty Bit bucket.
The scary part? For every outsider who can't see the thicket for the bushes, there’s one who does see the problem immediately and fixes it. Which is why there’s no pat answer to the question, Who has more insight?
-- David M. Cole
From THE COLE PAPERS, February 1997, Copyright © 1997, All Rights Reserved.
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