Between The Lines

EDN Senior Editor Mike Santarini covers digital design and the EDA, ASIC, and FPGA industries. [Editor's note: As of Feb. 2008, this blog is no longer active and is presented here for archival purposes.]

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Thursday, June 14, 2007

Another Grim Day for EDA: Richard Goering laid off from EE Times--CMP layoffs

Jun 14 2007 12:27PM | Permalink |Comments (12) |

Hey folks, a bunch of folks have just emailed me that Richard Goering, one of my mentors as a journalist from the 7 years I was at EE Times, has just been laid off. CMP Technology, owner of EE Times, announced it was having layoffs yesterday and today Richard sent out a note to his contacts list that he has lost his job.

Richard’s a great guy and damn fine journalist and he has been covering EDA from the beginning—when EDA was still a sub-niche of test and measurement. It’s sad to see him leave EE Times and sad for the EDA and design community. With Goering’s departure from EE Times, we’ve now seen two significant EDA voices dropped by larger companies. Gary Smith’s EDA analyst group was let go by research firm Gartner Dataquest late last year. It’s good to see Gary has landed on his feet and has started his own analyst group garysmitheda.com. I hope Richard does also, he’s been an asset not only to the EDA community but the IC and PCB design community and thus the electronics industry at large. He’s a quality guy and a journalist of the strongest ethic.

Reader Comments

at 6/14/2007 3:45:04 PM, Lou Covey said:
I can't say I'm surprised. I've heard more than one significant EDA executive doubt the value of supporting a free press by advertising. This is the eventual result. It's been the case for three years in Europe already. As long as EDA, as an industry, refuses to participate in a REAL conversation in the marketplace, it's it going to become more and more irrelevant to the electronics industry. I'm going to miss Richard a great deal. But he is a journalist with a first class mind. There has got to be a story to cover somewhere.

at 6/16/2007 10:04:29 AM, Erach Desai, as Principal of DESAIsive T said:
You show a great deal of class yourself, Mike, for having such praise for someone at a competing publication! I couldn’t agree more that a credible and independent voice on the technology and business of EDA has apparently been sidelined.

At some level I do agree with Lou Covey. There does seem to be a trend, with Gartner nixing their EDA team last fall. However, I viewed that move by Gartner as a commercial decision, basically triggered by the "big three" deliberately mounting a financial jihad. If you don't like the messenger, and you are the big fish in the pond, then shoot the messenger.

But, that can't be the full story at EETimes/CMP? At least, I don't think so.

Which makes me wonder about the elephant in the room that no one really wants to talk about: global economics? Global economics that impacts us all from design engineers to financial analysts to experienced journalists. How many young, hungry, eager, and malleable junior writers can be had across the globe for one Richard Goering? I hope and pray that is not the case, but you have to wonder!

The pendulum of media power has now swung fully in the direction of larger corporations. This period will bring us regurgitated press releases from cut-and-paste "artists": presenting the message exactly as the larger companies want them to be. Until the pendulum begins to swing back ... eventually!

at 6/16/2007 10:55:08 PM, Michael Santarini said:
You raise some interesting points, Erach. Good to hear from you. I don’t see a “shoot the messenger” thing here or a “Jihad” (though EDA execs do gripe that general press coverage is negative (no such thing as bad press? vs. if a tree falls in the woods). It wasn’t like Richard was writing about anything that would get him "snuffed out"--industry collusion, exposes of corruption or any torrid stuff--it was pretty much the same old EDA industry coverage. I suspect the reasons for the layoffs at EE Times are very complex and one can speculate all day as to what’s going on…all I know for sure is I’ve worked with a lot of great editors and reporters over the years covering electronics and now there are a lot less. Jihad? I don’t think so. There’s a lot of information out there. Some would argue too much…maybe there’s an information bubble ala the dot com bubble and it is going to burst. Can readers tell what’s a regurgitated press release and what is a real article any more? Are press releases now articles? Can readers tell if a writer or blogger is credible, who he or she is paid by? What is credible? One of the great things about the old school of journalism is that editors lived by a monk like ethic and discipline and big news papers would fire and essentially the industry would black ball a journalist that wasn’t ethical—it was self policing. That still lives at most of the larger and more credible pubs that still remember what journalism is. Today however in a lot of cases there isn’t that filter and I can imagine the following scenarios occur regularly: A blogger praises a tool in a blog but his or her real job is a contractor design services company doing side work referred by the tool vendor…A contractor, part time journalist writes an article for an established website but also works part time as a pr agent (perhaps even wrote the press release to begin with) and doesn’t disclose it…An established news or news wire service struggles for revenues and tries a new press release regurgitation model with contractors (the commoditization of editorial) hoping that readers will not notice and be loyal to a brand and not to editors because the number of hits on their website (never mind who is doing the hitting) is all that matters to potential advertisers. The big question all of us in the public and readers of all this massive amount of data must ask ourselves today is…is this source credible? You guys in the financial analyst world know all about disclosure…some had to learn it the hard way a couple of years back…I covered it, remember? The brand changed, the editor didn’t. Keep reading EDN (we have eNews and eBusiness under the EDN brand now)…I don’t regurgitate press releases and my pay only comes from our publisher, Reed Business...Reed Elsevier.

at 6/17/2007 6:19:37 PM, Lou Covey said:
Mike,

Just before E News went entirely electronic, there was an interview with the CEOs of the big three EDA companies in which it was stated that they were tired of the rest of the industry getting a "free ride" on their marketing budgets. In other words, trade shows and advertising. Shortly after that, the big EDA companies dramatically cut thier advertising budgets and started curtailing trade show activity. Because those companies were the leaders, the other companies in the industry followed suit and cut their budgets as well. You know the results. Magazines died, editors were laid off, editorial space disappeared and the rise of contractor journalism began. What was predicted, happened. By abandoning support for the free press, the market conversation disappeared... and with it the market itself. EDA is still trying to recover. While the downturn had many other reasons, the death of the market conversation has kept recovery stunted. It wasn't a jihad against the press. It was just a very shortsighted business decision that will affect thousands.
There have been multiple studies in Europe and the US regarding the success of companies relative to their marketing budgets. All state the same thing: When marketing spending drops below 5 percent of revenue, the company fails. The entire EDA industry does not spend more than 3 percent of revenue on marketing. The result is obvious.
So the free ride is over. It's going to cost a lot more to get it started again.

at 6/18/2007 9:50:29 AM, Lori Kate Smith said:
Mike, very classy write up. Richard, thank you for your professionalism and pushing the EDA marketing people to provide deeper news stories. We'll miss your independent voice.

at 6/18/2007 1:33:43 PM, Gary Smith said:
Hey Mike, This is a sad day for the Design community. EDA has always had more coverage than many people thought we deserved and a lot of that was because of Richard. Richard was the top of his class and losing someone like that always has an impact. Cutting and pasting Press Releases doesn’t sell papers; expert opinion on those News Releases does. That’s what Richard always provided. He was the trusted screen for all of the BS that passes for information in this day of “everyone is an editor” internet.

Putting my analyst hat on, this will make marketing a lot harder for the EDA vendors. This leaves a big hole in their information channel. My bet is that that hole will be filled. I just hope that Richard is part of the team that fills that hole.

at 6/18/2007 4:55:19 PM, Yvette Huygen said:
I can see that last week''s disappointing news that Richard Goering has been laid off will continue to be a hot topic for a while -- and it should be. The question everyone seems to be asking is "what does this mean for EDA industry coverage and visibility?" Needless to say, people are assuming the answer isn''t good.

Even in an era where new media and Web 2.0 are the main communications focus, great journalists continue to play a crucial role -- they offer understanding/depth of knowledge, the credibility of an outside perspective, and fairness. The problem is that economics seem to working against them.

Richard is a well-respected journalist. He understands EDA technology, he keeps everyone honest by never forgetting the public commitments companies make, and he''s fair -- not only in the points of view he tries to offer, but in trying to balance coverage amongst EDA companies.

Richard''s departure will leave a huge void -- We all know Richard contributed a lot to the EDA community. I''m hoping Richard will find some way to continue covering EDA, but whatever he decides to do, we all wish him the best of luck. After more than 17 years tackling EDA, he deserves some recognition!

at 9/12/2007 3:16:00 PM, DeviceGuru said:
how does one reach Richard?
pls reply to: deviceguru@gmail.com

at 10/9/2007 2:33:04 PM, CYI said:
A couple of weeks ago, CMP hosted an event at TechMart to explain some of the recent changes that they had made. Paul Miller, president of the CMP Electronics Group, was the speaker. He said that the changes had not been motivated by financial problems. In fact, he said that CMP had $1 billion in cash. He explained how the media world was changing and how CMP had to change with it. A few years ago, most of CMP's revenue came from their print publications. Today, most of their revenues come from online publications and trade show services with print accounting for about 30% of their revenue mix.

In terms of Richard Goering, his comments were somewhat conflicting. On one hand, he said that they had received a lot of negative feedback since the cuts. But later, he said that in all the focus groups that had been held during his career at CMP, no one had ever cited specific editors as being the reason that they read the publications, then he recanted and said that there had been two such editors, neither of whom I'd ever heard of. Mike Santarini tried to make a point about the quality of content. He said that when he had first joined EE Times, the editorial staff was filled with superstars. But, today, only five of those editors are still there. He presented a restaurant analogy - that if you had a world class chef and supporting staff, the result would be a five star restaurant. But if you hired a bunch of short-order cooks instead, the result obviously would not be as good. Miller responded that even if you had a five star restaurant, if no customers came, then you had a problem and would have to make some changes. He continued that the EDA industry had completely backed off from advertising with CMP and that CMP had had to make changes. He admitted that the advertising-based business model was broken. The model depends on three components - great content, readers, and advertisers. In EDA, Miller maintained that they still had great content and readers, but no advertisers. Someone from the audience said, if that were the case, then the small EDA companies were at the mercy of the large ones because they were the only ones that could afford to spend enough on advertising to sustain that business model. Miller disagreed saying that CMP had the readership that EDA companies wanted to reach and if they wanted to get to that readership, then they should advertise.

Since the changes, I've certainly noticed a decline in the quality of content at EE Times – not just EDA content but all content. A few weeks ago, there was a story about how an IBM compute server fell off of a forklift and how IBM and the customer were blaming each other for the damages. The next day, a follow-up story appeared about how IBM absolutely denied any responsibility for the mishap. A few days later, there was a story about Cadence and Microsoft signing a cross-licensing agreement. It didn't say what they were cross-licensing, so unless we can expect to see chip design capabilities in future releases of Excel and PowerPoint, I'm not sure what the point of these stories were except to show that IBM and Microsoft probably purchase a lot of advertising from CMP. A story that did NOT show up in EE Times was Cadence’s announcement of the availability of new DFM functionality that they had acquired by purchasing a number of small startups. This is the type of story that I would expect to see in EE Times. Mike Santarini wrote a nice story about it here on EDN, but there wasn't even a mention of it in EE Times. And then, there was the EE Times editor who wrote a full-page blog entry about a local supermarket closing in his neighborhood, how upset he was that the property’s owner had no plans to replace it, and how this was a precursor to the demise of western civilization. The next day, he followed up with another blog entry on why he had written the original story in the first place.

Miller said that there is more traffic today at the CMP sites than there was a few months ago. I have to admit that I go to the EE Times web site more often than I used to because I'm desperately searching for something, anything relevant to my industry. Unfortunately, when I get there, there is no there there.

at 10/9/2007 3:22:27 PM, Michael Santarini said:
Thanks for your comments CYI. I’m glad to hear folks are paying attention to the simple stuff, like quality. BTW, EDAC recorded the entire event so if some of you readers are curious and have 90 minutes of spare time, it’s an interesting listen. I won’t comment on it further than I did at the event itself…I think it was brave for Miller to stand up and allow the press (thus competitors) into the meeting. As Miller said, it wasn’t his decision to let Goering go, he deferred layoff decisions to someone else.

PS: The show I was referring to at the event was “Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares.” It originally aired on BBC and has since made it to Fox as “Kitchen Nightmares.” The BBC show is a bit better…Despite what Miller said, I think the analogy is valid.

at 10/31/2009 4:46:43 PM, CitoupCithelp said:
Other variant is possible also

at 10/31/2009 4:47:51 PM, CitoupCithelp said:
Other variant is possible also

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Thursday, June 14, 2007

Another Grim Day for EDA: Richard Goering laid off from EE Times--CMP layoffs

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