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The Media

Electronic News Is Shutting Its Doors 87

Posted by Hemos from the closing-down dept.
ahess247 writes "You probably missed it, but last week, the publication that helped give Silicon Valley its name announced that it will be shutting down its paper edition next month. Electronic News is one of the oldest trade publications covering the electronics and semiconductor industries. Launched in 1957, it predates its main competitor EETimes by more than a decade. One of its main claims to fame is it was the first publication to ever use the phrase "Silicon Valley" in print. A reporter for the weekly paper, the late Don Hoefler wrote a series of stories entitled "Silicon Valley, USA" that started the week of Jan. 11, 1971. The name, as we all know, stuck. It was also within the pages of Electronic News that Intel Corp. first advertised its 4004 Microprocessor. Once considered the bible of the electronics industry, its last printed issue will go out to subscribers on Dec. 2. According to this press release from its current owner, Reed Business, the publication will shift to an "all digital format." All but three staffers have been let go, and they will produce what essentially amounts to an online newsletter. Not a fitting end for a publication with such an important place in the history of the semiconductors industry."
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Electronic News Is Shutting Its Doors More

Electronic News Is Shutting Its Doors

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  • hey (Score:2, Insightful)

    by redshift-systems ( 622407 )
    what is wrong with that?
    • well the irony kinda stings i think. perhaps the dot-com bubble burst was some form of fore-shadowing of the fate of electronic news.
  • Wasn't this the publication which was also, in part (at least from the "advertising", responsible for the widespread popularity of the Altair as well?

  • Fitting? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by DoctorFrog ( 556179 ) on Tuesday November 26, 2002 @05:17AM (#4757553)
    Not a fitting end for a publication with such an important place in the history of the semiconductors industry."

    Or perhaps it is...

  • Poetic? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by BoBaBrain ( 215786 ) on Tuesday November 26, 2002 @05:23AM (#4757567)
    [Electronic News] will produce what essentially amounts to an online newsletter. Not a fitting end for a publication with such an important place in the history of the semiconductors industry.


    Call it irony or call it poetry, but isn't this the most fitting end imaginable?
  • We are in the age of information, electronic information for that matter. This could be the start of a very big trend. Publicationscan save millions by providing their pubs online with a nominal subscription fee. Of course there will always be those who prefer their hard copy.

    • Re:Here it comes... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by mbogosian ( 537034 ) <matt@arena[ ]imited.com ['unl' in gap]> on Tuesday November 26, 2002 @05:26AM (#4757576) Homepage
      We are in the age of information, electronic information for that matter. This could be the start of a very big trend. Publicationscan save millions by providing their pubs online with a nominal subscription fee. Of course there will always be those who prefer their hard copy.

      I don't think the point of the post was that EETimes is going "online only"...it's that they're in financial trouble and are (slowly) shutting things down.
      • I don't think the point of the post was that EETimes is going "online only"...it's that they're in financial trouble and are (slowly) shutting things down.

        of course they are... if the public weren't so slow, MOST if not ALL print publications would be in financial trouble. This is the way things are heading, and publication companies are realizing that you can publish the equivelant of an online newsletter or magazine with a MUCH smaller staff and MUCH cheaper costs than a dead tree version.

        Pull out the horse-drawn carraige similies if you must, but technology and human advancement marches on..

        • if the public weren't so slow, MOST if not ALL print publications would be in financial trouble. This is the way things are heading, and publication companies are realizing that you can publish the equivelant of an online newsletter or magazine with a MUCH smaller staff and MUCH cheaper costs than a dead tree version.

          And now the reader has to pay for a broadband connection as well as a subscription if he wants the ease of browsing he once enjoyed in a paper form. Oh, and a PC too, if he didn't already have that.

          Do you think Martha Stewart's "Living" is going to be going all online any time soon?

  • Oh no :( (Score:4, Interesting)

    by EmagGeek ( 574360 ) on Tuesday November 26, 2002 @05:28AM (#4757580) Journal
    How am I going to goof off while pretending to work now? Now I have one fewer thing to do to distract myself from my real work :(

    All joking aside, I liked electronic news a LOT more than I liked EETimes. EN actually sent me relevant, interesting stories whereas EETimes only publishes articles based on the IEEE's agenda du jour

    Am I the only one who notices that EETimes articles are almost always political in nature whereas EN just reports the facts? I will miss EN for sure.

  • all in the game (Score:5, Insightful)

    by katalyst ( 618126 ) on Tuesday November 26, 2002 @05:31AM (#4757586) Homepage
    This is typical of the IT industry. IBM - the pioneers of the homePC lost out to other companies like Dell/Compaq/HP. The GUI pioneered by Xerox (poor sods) lost it to Apple and then finally to Microsoft. Even the console market - Sega and Nintendo are losing out to the playstations and maybe the Xbox(still to be seen). SO why not a newspaper ?

    • Re:all in the game (Score:2, Offtopic)

      by hype7 ( 239530 )
      The GUI pioneered by Xerox (poor sods) lost it to Apple


      this makes me mad.

      From woz.org [woz.org]:
      Q From e-mail: ... I also have one question; did Apple "steal" the GUI from Xerox (at PARC), or did they develop it themselves?

      WOZ: Apple worked with Xerox openly to bring their developments to a mass audience. That's what Steve portrayed Apple as being good at. Xerox got a lot of Apple stock for it too, it was an agreement.
      Apple stole *nothing*. It was a deal. Whether it was a smart deal... doesn't matter. Both companies agreed.

      As for MS stealing from Apple... well, that's another story entirely.

      -- james
    • "Even the console market - Sega and Nintendo are losing out to the playstations and maybe the Xbox(still to be seen)."

      As they took over from Atari.

  • First article? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Zapper ( 68283 )
    1957? I can just imagine the first "Hardware Review":
    We started our review of this machine several years ago and we are pleased to unveil our 3Dmark results for the IBM 608...

  • 4004 (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Interesting picture of the 4004 processor. The interconnects are nearly the size of the bonded wires to the chip.

    Can a person still buy one of these gems? Surely, they have educational possibilities. They get down to low level logic and would be fascinating to program.
  • Well, I suppose if they are going into an all-digital format, "Electronic News" will finally be electronic! Ha!
    • That's just what I was thinking.

      This isn't the end of the publication,
      this is reaching the promise of its name,
      so now it is Electronic News With News Of Electronics (and stuff that sparks).

  • It's as fitting an end as could be imagined (Score:3, Interesting)

    by edhall ( 10025 ) <slashdot@weirdnoise.com> on Tuesday November 26, 2002 @06:04AM (#4757647) Homepage

    Change, and the new superseding the old, is what the Silicon Valley is all about. Yes, companies come and go, but it isn't the companies, per se, that make SV what it is. It's the human infrastructure, the critical mass of talent that is always ready to move on and create the next "great thing."

    -Ed

  • Slashdot story re-written:

    In the past, whenever Electronic News wanted to publish, we first engaged in a violent attack on trees that resulted in their deaths. Now we are publishing with re-cycled electrons that have been re-used continuously for 14 billion years.

    My question: Isn't this a happy story? Why does the Slashdot story read like a funeral?
  • It would be nice if they straightened out who can call themselves Silicon Valley North; Calgary, Ottawa, Seattle, Portland or Markham (Toronto)?
    • Let Google decide: " 'silicon valley north' and *** "

      • Calgary: 542
      • Ottawa: 4860
      • Seattle: 533
      • Portland: 136
      • Markham: 183
      • Toronto: 3880
      I first heard it used with reference to Ottawa.
    • All this Silicon Valley North/South/East, Silicon Alley, etc. crap is ridiculous. Come up with your own f*ckin' name because using an offshoot of Silicon Valley just makes you look like a weak wanna-be, which is exactly the opposite of what I'm sure you're going for.
      • Although Ottawa keeps calling themselves it I have always said that since Nortel and JDS were keeping the high tech alive hear that the other places were probably more justified in calling themselves it as there are more large companies with real campuses compared to a building in a business park elsewhere than here

  • Industry-specific publications... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by buckeyeguy ( 525140 ) on Tuesday November 26, 2002 @09:15AM (#4758325) Homepage Journal
    are the stuff that fills corporate ref libraries, which are themselves falling prey to the 'online is better' notion. Never read EN, but I'm guessing that it's something like Aviation Week, a publication my dad could not do without in his days at a major aerospace supplier; if you had a subscription, you knew what was going on in the industry. Now they have an online presence [aviationnow.com]. It's probably just a natural evolution for mags like these, the ref library of the future will merely be a collection of links and content subscriptions. Hope that's not true, but that's the way it's shaping up.

    And, online versions mean that you don't have to toss out a pile of mags every so often.

    • I still get the print version of Aviation Week every, uh...week. While some of the stories in aviationnow.com and the magazine overlap, they each have unique material that makes both versions relevant and useful.

      Although now that I have 802.11b and can carry my notebook/PDA into the toilet and still maintain a good internet connection, their days might be numbered. ;-)
    • Not all online versions are better than their dead tree predecessors. Byte magazine, until it's last few years was an excellent publication. They started to suck when they stopped publishing hardware projects and source listings. The online version now is jsut more marketing crap, like PC mag.
      • Actually, I can't think of any online versions that are really superior to their print counterparts... and while Byte was more of a general computing mag than a industry/trade mag, it did have its niche. In the end, I only read it for Jerry Pournelle's end-user-oriented column (and then sometimes only to see what he and Niven were up to ;)
  • The name of this publication and it's significance needs to be added to Eric S. Raymond's New Hacker Dictionary so it can be preserved and passed down to our child processes.

  • Who reads this? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Cap'n Canuck ( 622106 )
    I'm not talking about Electronic News, I'm talking about this particular reply.

    Look at the numbers - barely a quarter of the normal replies, and a tenth if it was a story about William Shatner doing an interview. That tells me two things:
    1) This article does not belong in /.
    2) It's no surprise that EN is dying.

    I did read EN back in the 80's and 90's (it was good), but I haven't picked up a copy since then.

    BTW - it would come as no surprise to me that this is neither read, replied to, or moderated, but you can prove me wrong. Go ahead.
    • Well, I just had to reply. I thought it would make you feel better that your words were not wasted. :) I have to agree with you though on the interest level of this story. I am actually surprised I got to your comment. It's a slow day at work an' all. BTW, I don't recall ever reading, or even hearing about this publication. Maybe Hemos has some sort of attachment to this?
  • It was inevitable. Faithfully following Moore's law, the volume of semiconductor news has been doubling every 18 months since the invention of the integrated circuit. The last issue of the Electronic News was about 43 billion pages long, and the print run consumed the entire output of the British Columbia pulp and paper industry.
  • As I write this, the main article is about to roll off the /. front page, yet there are only 66 follow up replies posted. That would seem to indicate a less than enthusiastic following for this rag. One more freebie trade rag bites the dust. I promise you, your local landfill is thankful.
  • I competed against them for several years as a reporter for EBN. What another poster perceived as their advantage (that they competed against EET) was their fatal flaw: they didn't just compete against EET, but EBN and other electronics books as well.

    It was fine when the 4004 represented the majority of the industry, but they tried to cover MCU, ASICs, design software, systems, you name it. That became impossible ten years ago, and they basically scrambled for the past decade to try and keep up and stay in business. (Also, we'd use them as a farm team and hire away all their best reporters...)

  • I always thought Silicon Gulch [pantar.com] predated Silicon Valley.
    • Though memory can be flawed, I have a strong one of visiting a cousin in San Jose in 1962 and his driving me through Mountain View, while telling me "And they're calling it "Silicon Valley."
  • I used to, in the '70s eagerly await the arrival of EN, but I stopped reading it around 1983. Every issue seemed to bring more news of large layoffs than of new developments.

    The all time low came when one of the trade papers ran an article with the headline "Cat Fight Looms in Logic Analyzers". I don't recall if this was EN, but...

    Perhaps there was a time after that when it improved for a while. I don't know - EET became the main source of my industry news and I never looked back. Now, with more of my information wants met online, I just spend a few minutes scanning through someone else's paper copy of EET.

    Paper has the great advantage of being readable while on the toilet.

  • Way back I asked myself "How can anyone stay in business publishing on paper with the printing costs etc with the net?"
    I got my answer more recently with the dot com bust.
    Not enough readership is online. Advertising isn't priced right and advertisers fear online media.
    But thats changing.
    For Electronic News it's already changed. It's readership is totally online by now with out exception.
    The advertisers aren't affrade.. Microsoft, IBM etc all cutting edge companys use electronic marketting and prefer it to print.
    It's priced right. They are premiuim ad space in the e space but not so much in the paper world.
    Your subscription to your local newspaper covers some of the printing costs.
    Ads take up the bulk of the papers operating costs. Those ads have to be pricy to pay for everything.
    That's how it works.
    With free web publishing your publishing costs are slashed to a much more managable price level but unless you can pull in the same money with e-ads the transition dosen't pay.
    • Actually. IC Master (www.icmaster.com) went completely electronic some time ago, yet is still pulling in many new subscribers. I think it depends upon the type of resource you are offering. A catalog like IC Master can hack it on the web better since it is primarily a reference tool, but a newsmagazine still needs to be able to be read in the can.

  • Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you
    lose your job. These economic downturns are very difficult to predict,
    but sophisticated econometric modeling houses like Data Resources and
    Chase Econometrics have successfully predicted 14 of the last 3 recessions.

    - this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...

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