One of the leading forums in print for informed consideration of the social implications of high-tech research and development, the MIT-based Technology Review, is striving to reinvent itself - leaving some former staff members, and loyal readers, wondering if the nation's most influential alumni magazine will forsake the kinds of dialog that have made Technology Review essential reading for scientists and policy-makers for decades.
Founded in 1889, Technology Review grew into a feisty venue in which articles about undersea robots and "neural interfaces" could run side-by-side with provocative salvos like Gar Alperovitz's "Distributing Our Technological Inheritance," which raised the hackles of the entrepreneur-heavy readership by pondering whether or not billionaires like Bill Gates have the right to reap pharaonic fortunes for commercial applications based on the breakthroughs of others.
The magazine was an editorial success, swelling the alumni readership of 45,000 by another 50,000 readers from the ranks of science and government. (Alumni received their issues with a special insert featuring news from within the MIT community.) Former editor Steve Marcus, however, admits that the magazine - unable to bring in the kind of big-ticket ad spreads that would have kept a larger publication in the black - was "hemorrhaging money" - overrunning the budget, in part, because of the free copies sent to alumni.
The advertising situation became especially dire, Marcus explains, when an ad-buying consortium of magazines called the Leadership Network - comprised of Technology Review, The New Republic, Commentary, The National Review, and others - fell apart in 1994. "We were big enough to need advertising," he says, "but too small to demand it."
Marcus lobbied the alumni association to hire a full-time publisher in the hopes that Technology Review, like the Smithsonian magazine, could be managed into a profit center for the prestigious institution that hosted it. The alumni association adopted Marcus' vision and hired R. Bruce Journey, formerly of Time Inc. and Fortune, to save the magazine.
Marcus left the magazine last April, following significant differences of opinion with Journey, though he says "You couldn't have genetically engineered anyone better for the job" of publisher than Journey. (Working with Journey was "a good honeymoon, but a bad marriage," Marcus reflects.) Under Marcus' editorship, the motto of Technology Review had been "technology and its implications." When new editor in chief John Benditt (formerly at Science and Scientific American) took the helm last September, that catch-phrase was recast as "ideas and innovations from the world of technology."
"Innovation" is the watchword of the new regime at Technology Review, and Benditt and Journey have showed themselves unafraid to innovate from the ground up, laying off nearly the entire editorial staff on 7 November - a day at least one departed staffer refers to as "dark Friday." Two days later, display ads appeared in the Boston Globe advertising editorial and design positions available at what Benditt promises will not be just Tech Review 2.0, but an entirely new magazine with a new mission.
"The Greeks had philosophy, the Renaissance had art," Benditt declares. "We have innovation as the unique feature of our civilization." The new Technology Review, he explains, will highlight groundbreaking research in targeted "hot" industries such as information technology, biotech, and nanotech, focusing on "areas where basic research is moving very rapidly into commercialization."
Former managing editor Sandra Hackman worked at Technology Review for 16 years, till September. Parsing the conflict as "a clash of private-sector values and a public institution" (Marcus says Journey refers to MIT as "a wonderful brand name"), Hackman claims that working conditions at Technology Review have "changed completely" since Benditt took over. "It's a whole corporate-control atmosphere," she says. "If people aren't fine, they can't speak out about it."
In Benditt's push to boost circulation to 200,000, Hackman observes, he never made an effort to see if the magazine in its former incarnation would have benefited from more aggressive marketing and other strategies. And the staff, she says, had no idea they would be laid off en masse in November. "They were worked to death this summer," she says, "and then thrown away." (Staffers were invited to reapply for their positions, but after a deluge of applications, only two - including senior editor Herb Brody - will be retained.)
Langdon Winner, who wrote a column for Technology Review for 10 years, has hopes for the new magazine, but is concerned that the focus on "innovation" will result in the same kind of "technology boosterism and hype that we can get everywhere."
In most coverage of the high-tech industries, says Winner, "I always hear the Yale fight song in the background - boola, boola! - and that's the only song we're going to be allowed to hear."
Former contributing writer Dick Sclove, executive director of the Loka Institute, sent out an alert titled "Mourning Technology Review" to a mailing list for those interested in the politics of science and technology.
The old Technology Review, Sclove says, was unique in its presentation of a variety of perspectives on technological issues and policy. "It was a place where conservative, progressive, critical, and left-of-center voices were all present," Sclove recalls. Most other publications, Sclove observes, preach to the converted.
"Everyone on the left reads lefty things, and everyone on the right reads righty things. Tech Review was filling a special niche" by bringing progressive voices to readers in government and the industry who would never read The Progressive - balanced by other views, he says.
Benditt promises that "There will be plenty of room in this magazine for analysis of policy issues and consideration of the human face of technology."
"The alumni association," he says, "had two choices: transformation and growth, or, essentially, death. They chose growth."
