Electronic News Is Shutting Its Doors

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."

Comments

Fitting?

[DoctorFrog]

Not a fitting end for a publication with such an important place in the history of the semiconductors industry."

Or perhaps it is...

Poetic?

[BoBaBrain]

[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?

Re:Here it comes...

[mbogosian]

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.

Oh no :(

[EmagGeek]

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

[katalyst]

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 ?

Industry-specific publications...

[buckeyeguy]

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. 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.