Editor's Corner

I've always used the link "Editor's Corner" to look over and revisit

Phillip Greenspun's material, and I've just noticed it has been

eliminated through the redesign of the photo.net homepage. Further

investigation shows me Brian Mottershead is now acting as editor. Is

there any announcement posted on this "changing of the guard"

status? As a long follower of this site (and Greenspun) I'm curious

for a little "behind the scenes" info if possible. Thanks in advance.

For what it's worth, the <a href="http://www.photo.net/philip-greenspun/">Editor's Corner</a> (or Philip's Corner) is still available from your workspace.

 

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As for Brian being acting Editor-in-Chief: I think it's only reasonable to have (at the very least) a substitute for Philip during his long summer trip flying across America.

Jack, I assumed the role of "acting" Editor-in-Chief in June when three events coincided this Spring.

 

The first was that Philip Greenspun and Kyle Nichols left for a four month flying vacation to Alaska. Philip was still listed as Editor-in-Chief at that point, but apart from some bursts of activity when he had the time, he had not been actively involved in photo.net since 1999. Actually the more significant departure in terms of day-to-day operations was Kyle, who had been working as "Managing Editor" for several months prior to her departure.

 

The second event was that Rajeev and Lisa Surati decided that they needed to focus on other things besides photo.net and reduce their activity to part-time. They had been working on photo.net full-time since 1999.

 

The third was that the other full-time staff person decided to move to California, and because of photo.net's finances, Rajeev and Lisa decided not to replace her.

 

In this situation, I offered to run photo.net full-time, to try to improve the financial situation, and to take a small salary out of whatever might be left over after other expenses. (So far this has not been anything, but I remain optimistic.)

 

The "acting" label on my role is only because when we last updated the masthead, all of this was still in the process of being worked out. It was not because there was the notion that Philip would return to the role at the end of his vacation, and that I was only "filling in". I guess I should update the masthead to remove the "acting".

Brian, I certainly hope you will not be taking a smaller role upon Phillip's return. Not only have you been doing a wonderful job but before you did take an active role photo.net felt like it was a ship sailing in the middle of the ocean but with no one at the ruddy---maybe little danger of crashing into anything, yet no sense of exactly which way it was heading either.<p>Perhaps all was indeed fine internally at that time, I'm sure many were working hard at the site, but based on the deafening silence that sometimes existed it was hard to see that from the outside looking in....

I totally agree with Richard, when the photo.net ship was in rough waters before and especially after Philipp's 'burst of activity' (I love euphemisms) Brian did and does a stellar job, lots of very good moves, that make the site much more useful and help to minimize a lot of problems.