[The Editor's Spin]

What's In a Name?


David R. Guenette
EMedia Professional, January 1997
Copyright © Online Inc.

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Ten years. That's what this magazine is starting in on with this issue, and with this new volume, there is something to go with the turn of decade: a new name. Welcome to EMedia Professional.

The name change to EMedia Professional, nÄe CD-ROM Professional, doesn't represent a revolution in this publication's areas of coverage--or purview, as we say in magazine lingo--but rather reflects an evolution in digital publishing and information distribution and use. Here's a one-sentence description we've used in various PR bits heralding the name change that tries to capture the core issues:

With CD-ROM Professional's name change to EMedia Professional, Online Inc. is recognizing the expanding landscape of electronic media, and noting both the leap forward in CD-ROM's connectivity--for example, CD-ROM/online hybrids and CD integrated into LANs and Intranets--and the new technologies growing out of the compact disc family, such as DVD, CD-Recordable, and CD-Erasable.
Of course, one sentence--even one as long and as full of offset clauses and serial lists as this one--can't touch on every aspect of the name change.

The fact is, readers will see that coverage is not significantly different in 1997 than that of 1996; indeed, we could have easily run with the new name in 1996. And we could have changed the name of the magazine in mid-year too, except that for an East coast culture-based outfit like us, changing titles mid-volume seemed untidy and, well, a bit inconsiderate of the librarians. We are especially fond of librarians, by the way, because they represented a main audience for this book in the early days, when CD-ROM was much the niche technology serving libraries and information specialists.

All this is to say to those readers who see the name change and worry that we've lost our minds and have decided to become the twentieth or thirtieth Web page design periodical in the market, that our modus operandi is and will continue to offer practical help, perspective, and analysis to those who are trying to get real work done in the electronic media world.

But a title change had to be made. There is, of course, the issue of CD becoming more and more connected via online, as the great CD-oriented market research house InfoTech reports with its projection of 3,500 CD/online hybrids being published in 1997. In addition, there is the undeniable trend of using CD-ROM and CD-R within corporate networks, both for access to commercial titles across the company and as part of an enterprise-wide data storage and management solution. We've spent plenty of effort on explaining these trends, and the name change helps us say that we will expand our efforts to do so.

But I'll be honest about why we really wanted to change the name: for most people--by which I mean the vast majority of our real market, and most decidedly not the small percentage comprised of long-time CD experts and aficionados and veterans-- "CD-ROM" means "CD-ROM" and not CD-Recordable, and not DVD, and not the dozen other formats--online'd, networked, or otherwise--that make up or have grown out of the original compact disc family. Compact disc is the first real digital publishing infrastructure, and the focus of this magazine will remain solidly on real action, real markets, and real tools, but today "CD-ROM" means too little to too many.

In the course of each year, I and the other editors find ourselves manning the CD-ROM Professional/Online Inc. booth at various conferences and exhibitions, which is great, because it gives us the chance to speak with and listen to our readers and those who should be our readers. Even a year ago, we began to notice a curious thing: when we would hear from potential readers who really wanted a magazine about CD-Recordable, say, or that they needed to learn about DVD, for instance, and so weren't all that interested in a magazine called CD-ROM Professional, I had two possible reactions. What I wanted to do was shout that, well, of course CD-ROM Professional is THE book on CD-Recordable and that, don't you know, CD-ROM Professional had been scooping the industry on high density formats since mid-1994! My other choice--the one I made, fortunately--was to listen. What I heard was that after only ten years, CD-ROM had become ubiquitous and so conspicuous that new developments like CD-Rewritable and DVD seem to many potential subscribers as existing in a world apart.

And those people are right, since it is their perceptions that define categories and classes. And these people are right too when they say that their interest is on the pragmatic world of electronic media, however best presented. We believe that compact disc still stands as the practical focal point of the real opportunities for large digital information efforts in commercial and corporate publishing and data storage, but the shift is toward process and purpose, with the specific technology falling to its rightful station as the handmaiden to specific goals of publisher, user, and enterprise.

We've always believed that. Now our name reflects this view more clearly.

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