“Life is short,” Garry Shandling famously whined. “But not short enough!”
You tell me if life is short: I’m 56. I’ve owned a company for 10 years. Was a freelance writer for 15 years before that. And before that I founded a business communication journal that’s now been defunct for two decades, which I was reminded of this week when an employee communication executive named Jeff Pekar posted about it on LinkedIn.
Pekar (whose name I don’t remember) published this picture of the Journal of Employee Communication Management, along with his remark that he was “fortunate to share those pages with communication legends like Shel Holtz, Angela Sinickas, Roger D’Aprix and many more.”
Communication legends Holtz and Crescenzo chimed in with generous kudos to me, as JECM‘s editor.
But the truth is that the work I did founding and that journal almost 30 years ago is mostly forgotten—well, not the work, but the guy who did it. As will be the guy who did the work I’m doing now, 30 years hence. I’ve seen it happen so many times—with so many names in communications—some of whom I remember (and may be the last to remember). Pat Jackson, Chet Burger, Lou Williams, Marilyn Laurie.
I’ve still got much more work to do, but I live my life as a rejoinder to Shandling:
Life is long. But not long enough!
David, there was nothing like the JECM before, and there has been nothing like it since, even though it’s sorely needed. I devoured that journal when it arrived in the mail. I still have copies. I miss it.
The task of every other month, finding six employee comms folks to write interesting 3,000-word essays … was tough 30 years ago. It might be a nightmare today. But we were … the Harvard Business Review for employee communications!
Wow. Thirty years. Happy anniversary! I’m proud to have been a contributor to JECM, and I’m forever grateful that you accepted my article on the premature death of the corporate magazine in the form of a one-act play. Shel is right. It would be just as relevant and useful to communicators today.