A Common Market, A Common Currency, A Common Theme
April 24, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan
It seems like forever since I went to a COMMON midrange user group, and yes, I know it is called PowerUp 2023 and I know everyone shouts POWER in their POWERUp but I don’t. When someone SHOUTS IN THIS NEWSLETTER, I want you to see it. Marketeers don’t get to change the way language and typography works just because they have a love of ransom notes.
I am very much looking forward to going to PowerUp, even though I am not all that excited to drive from Boone at 3:30 a.m. in the morning to catch a 6:30 a.m. boarding time to Atlanta and then on to Denver. But at my age, I don’t need as much sleep as I used to anyway, and besides, my Oura healthcare ring tells me I have optimal sleep even with five and a half or six hours. When I sleep, I sleep. When I move, I move.
I am in a reflective mood as I pack for the trip to Denver. I was hired to be the editor of this newsletter back in July 1989, and while I have a pretty good technical background and was also a fair writer, I really had a lot to learn and my mentor and publisher, Hesh Wiener, carried me financially on his back for a year or two before I even broke even on the costs, much less helped his company turn a profit. He taught me a trade and helped me hone it, and for that, I am grateful.
But what I initially knew – and it still shows in how I write – was subscription-based boutique and analytical publishing. Hesh had three monthly newsletters that made a couple hundred grand each, and about half of that revenue was eaten up in printing and mailing. For you original 1,000 subscribers of The Four Hundred, I waxed the masters of each page, walked them to the offset printer, edited the bluelines, carried them back to the office in a cab, put your label on your envelope, stuffed the newsletter into the envelope, bagged them up and hauled them like Santa Claus to the Spring Street Post Office in New York City each month. It was personal. I knew all of your names, and many times you sent me letters. It was truly publishing.
At some point, when the Internet came along and lowered the barrier to entry – meaning the cost – to publishing, Hesh was too slow to change and also, to be blunt, didn’t listen to me about getting a Microsoft Windows NT newsletter out the door, which I was willing to write. (We had access to beta code way ahead of the market for Windows NT, and I strongly suspected this was Microsoft’s third time charm moment after OS/2 Server and Windows for Workgroups.) Hesh was embroiled in a lawsuit defending our copyrights, as well as spending half of his time living in London, and now that I am what his age was at the time, I understand his tenacity about protecting what is his own and I also understand the necessity to remain resilient, to keep doing the next thing as well as the current things. I also understand that he needed something different in his life, a different life. (I eventually did, too, which is how I got from New York to North Carolina.)
It wasn’t always easy. When the printing model of publishing broke down, which was when I was getting ready to get married, Hesh sold me the rights and trademark to The Four Hundred for $1, and wished me luck. In the most sincere of ways. (This was an extremely generous gesture, but also enlightened self-interest. I eventually hired Hesh and paid it backward only a few years later.)
That was in November 1996, and because I saw the writing on the wall, I had incorporated Guild Companies Inc in August 1996 because I figured the bits were going to hit the fan. And so, I set out to build a web version of The Four Hundred, as well as its Windows and Unix companion, which I called Midrange Server. I got to work, hired a part-time advertising salesperson, and just could not get it off the ground. To make this work, you had to have a large readership from the get-go, you could not build it from scratch and also be able to pay the bills. So when I went to my first COMMON in San Francisco in 1997, I paid for my membership, flew out, stayed with friends to keep the costs down . . . . and to my great shame, I so lacked confidence in what I was doing and how I might compete in this advertising-supported publishing world against the likes of Midrange Computing and News/400. I turned around at the front door and took a very, very long walk around San Francisco. And I never went in to meet any of you, who I had already been serving for nearly a decade in my own way.
A year later, I mothballed what I was doing, with my daughter Eleanor on the way, and took a job at Midrange Computing. And in July 2001, when Midrange Computing went bust, leaving us all in the lurch – and only a week before my son Henry was born – I was ready. On fire, in fact. A collective of advertising partners and editors backed me from the beginning, and fronted them. And despite 9/11, we went to the fall COMMON that October and we were a team and we were going to do this thing that became IT Jungle. We knew what to do and how to do it, and COMMON was a part of it from the beginning.
We all worked remotely, across many states and sometimes foreign countries, and COMMON was our water cooler, where we sat around and talked, as well as meeting the readers and advertisers who supported us. I was never able to go as much as I wanted to – I have had two jobs for as long as I can remember, which complicates things – but I am going this year with Alex Woodie, and we will be there to see all of you and take the pulse of this market that we both love and have served for many decades. You honor us with your support, and we are grateful for the role that you let us play.
Hi,
I really liked reading this.
This is part of why, I think, you are so highly respected.
Thank you,
Jozsef
Thank you, Jozsef. I appreciate you.