IEEE Spectrum April, 2014 - 8

SpectrAL LineS_

04.14

The Team that brings you The Institute every
month includes [from left] Senior Editorial Assistant
Amanda Davis, Editor in Chief Kathy Kowalenko
Pretz, and Associate Editor Monica Rozenfeld.

nificant number of readers, and of course,
of great importance to others."
It took Christiansen a few years to convince IEEE's Board of Directors that a separate publication was needed. He gained
some traction from developments within
IEEE. In 1972, IEEE members voted to
change the organization's constitution to
broaden the scope from that of a strictly
technical society to one involved in professional issues as well. Back then those
topics included wage busting, unionizing,
licensing, and working conditions.
The question was, how should Spectrum
cover such topics? "Because of the controversial nature of professional issues at the
time, many of us feared that including such
material within the covers of Spectrum
would have a significantly adverse effect
on advertising revenue," wrote Jerome J.
News for members grew from a few pages in
Suran, an IEEE officer who would become
IEEE Spectrum into a full-fledged publication
the organization's president in 1979. That
comment is an excerpt from a letter Suran
o thr ive, a m aga zine has to publish articles of intense interest to its read- wrote in 1985.
In the letter, Suran went on to describe
ers. The alternative is irrelevance, followed by extinction. But is there anything
major debates within the IEEE Publication
else a magazine should do?
Services and Products Board and the IEEE
Well, if you're talking about a magazine published by an association, you
Board of Directors about the new publicamight reasonably expect it to dispense news about the association-important
decisions by its governing boards, election results, recent achievements of its
tion's mission. Eventually, the boards aphigh-flying members, a calendar of upcoming conferences, perhaps a col- proved Christiansen's and Suran's plan to
spin off a newspaper to
umn written by its top officer.
cover professional and
And so it was with IEEE Spectrum, from its very first issue
IEEE news. The boards
in January 1964. A column called "News of the IEEE" (and later "Inside
also resolved to give the
IEEE") dispensed just such information. But the two missions never
editorial staff the responcoexisted comfortably. Spectrum was never a typical association magazine. To begin with, it competed for advertising with several hardsibility to report indepenIEEE SPECTRUM 1964 / 2014
charging commercial magazines with big staffs, international bureaus,
dently on professional
and powerful publishers. And for most advertisers, an association publication isn't the
issues in a balanced and timely way, and
first choice to get their message across.
to reserve space in the new publication for
So when Spectrum's new editor, Donald Christiansen, came on board in 1972, he
IEEE leaders to communicate their views
found it awkward to have IEEE's flagship magazine trying to serve two masters: those
and decisions to the members.
who wanted to read about technology and those who were interested in how the sociChristiansen, with support from Suran,
took steps to launch the separate publicaety was being governed.
"Ideally, those two should not be attempted in a single publication," he says. "First, it
tion. In December 1976 a four-page insert
discourages advertising. Second, the governance issues are of little or no interest to a sig- called The Institute was introduced. It

The Birth of The Institute

Editor's note: In this 50th anniversary year of IEEE Spectrum, we are using each month's Spectral Lines column to recount some pivotal moments of the magazine's history.
Here we describe the origins of Spectrum's companion publication of IEEE news, The Institute.
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Apr 2014

north AmericAn

SpectrUm.ieee.orG

phoTograph by

Randi Klett

http://SpectrUm.ieee.orG

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum April, 2014