Reporting currently on electronic news isn’t a pleasant job: you are confronted with an endless list of bad news, worldwide, Europe-wide and local. And even the press itself, apparently looking from a non-aligned position and a long distance to the scenario is deeply involved and suffering, too. So it seems suitable to reflect on our own position in this game called business life. The trade magazines are getting continually smaller in volume, and long-planned monthly issues will become a bimonthly production. And sometimes you are wondering where the respected editorial competitor XY has gone, since again a magazine vanished from the market. Well, that’s the mechanism: there is still a habit in the industry of feeding the editorial addresses with a wealth of information, as ever, but having forgotten that virtually no magazine or newspaper will survive without a critical mass of ads. The deal with information is critical. If regarded as a one-way-affair, we will see even more magazines be cancelled sooner or later. Moreover, there is another variant of industry marcom policy, too: with IPO not long ago, only financial or economy-based magazines are taken into account as an ad-podium in favor of investor relations. The good ol’ technical trade press – despite being the one and only platform for user and application-focused information – is just regarded as a surplus fifth wheel.
This isn’t a complaint, just a description of what’s going on with us from the trade press. We understand clearly: as soon as people in companies are fired because of bad business, advertising will be stopped immediately and almost completely. This has rendered true for many big firms which have been the happily anticipated global players. But in turn, this too leads inevitably to inroads into the magazine’s reserves, leading to drastically reduced coverage because of cost cuttings in the form of reduced editorial manpower and space. Ironically, during the roaring 99´s and 2000´s, some of these companies where talking about anticyclic procedures. Marcom people have to keep in mind: feeding information to magazines or inviting them to events, etc. is just one part of the arrangement. But when will we find opportunity to publish it (not in an overflowing abundance) or to follow those invitations, is a pressing question all along the magazine production schedule, and cannot be resolved sufficiently in every case.
Huge investments in new lines aren’t a topic at the moment, though manufacturing hasn’t stopped. In Europe, automotive, industrial and, to a smaller extent, telecom equipment, is still being produced. The search is for efficiency, a higher degree of automation, cost savings and all these fine consumables needed to run a line properly. But there is an underlying stream: what we can really feel in the electronics business (but not alone here), is uncertainty. Yesterday, I wrote about expectations for recovery in late 2002 or beginning 2003; today I can simply state: the upturn will be expected for late 2003 or beginning of 2004. Yes, we can supply the unreliability figures to our readership, but is this really a good policy? Nevertheless, in this issue you will find information on economical trends. We all have to be aware that those statements and expectations of today may easily render useless or at least misleading tomorrow. All that we can do in this situation is carefully watch the development and hopefully draw the appropriate decision from what we can see. It’s in man´s nature to see the same aspect differently according to the individual. So don’t be upset if your colleague or neighbor draws another conclusion from the same thing, since he sees quite a different aspect of the issue. Look at an elephant through different keyholes. Once you will see a very massive foot, then a big muscular trunk or a very big eye, and so on. Well, describing an elephant this way is very difficult. Summarizing this experience with a touch of Hindu mythology: life is Maya – just a fiction, created by ourselves, building a micro cosmos on the base of partially recognized information. Or for the computer specialist: What you see isn’t what you get.Gerhard B. Wolski
