Tough but fair: the reader's advocate

nfoWorld may have changed its look, editorial tagline, and staff many times over through the past 20 years, but it has never changed its basic mission: to advocate readers' interests. Magazines covering the fledgling PC business in the early days took on more of a cheerleader role, but InfoWorld has always been a bit different.

Advocacy was never more apparent than in InfoWorld's approach to product testing. By the time I joined InfoWorld in 1985, it had long been notorious for its review "report cards" -- and products that didn't always receive a passing grade. Most computer publications at that time simply would not consider printing a very critical review.

Shortly after it instituted the report card, which employed a "thumbs up/thumbs down" scale, one of the first products to earn a thumbs down was the Quadlink, a board-and-software combination from Quadram. The response was decidedly angry.

"The president of the company wrote scathing letters to me, the editor in chief, and [Pat] McGovern [the president of IDG]," says Rory O'Connor, former reviews editor now with the San Jose Mercury News. "He pulled all his ads. McGovern -- to his credit -- wrote back that we wouldn't retract just to win back ads."

With the advent of The InfoWorld Test Center came a more detailed scoring system. But even though readers obviously benefit from obtaining comparable scores, InfoWorld editors face a weekly struggle behind the scenes: For every product that scores well, several score poorly -- and the losing companies usually aren't happy.

This reader advocacy is equally integral to the news department's charge to keep readers informed of current and future happenings that can impact their decisions. For reporters, this has meant reporting what vendors want customers to know while finding out about what vendors don't want customers to know.

The early 1990s series of InfoWorld revelations regarding the rift between Microsoft and IBM is a prime example of this. InfoWorld's Alice LaPlante and Ed Scannell began reporting in March 1990 on behind-the-scenes infighting concerning OS/2 vs. Windows, culminating in the Aug. 27, 1990, article "IBM-Microsoft alliance crumbling." Though widely cited in the daily press, the story was debunked by industry observers, IBM, and Microsoft. But InfoWorld stood behind its coverage.

This backbone of courage still is demonstrated weekly, in every news story, review, and -- let's not forget -- column. But we'll save those courageous column memories for our next anniversary.

Contributing Editor Ed Foster writes InfoWorld's The Gripe Line, and has served as senior writer, features editor, executive news editor, and editor.