EarthWeb bought The Perl Journal back in May 1999, and now EarthWeb has sold its web sites and newsletters to Internet.com. It is not clear how TPJ will be affected. Jon Orwant, editor of TPJ, sent out some email telling us what's going on: TPJ is apparently still owned by EarthWeb, issue #20 is done but waiting to be printed, and the future of TPJ is uncertain.
Date: Tue, 2 Jan 2001 19:18:48 -0500 From: Jon Orwant <orwant@oreilly.com> To: Jon Orwant <orwant@oreilly.com> Subject: The state of TPJ
January 2, 2001
Some folks have been asking me about the status of The Perl Journal #20, and prospective authors have been asking me about deadlines for future issues. The answers: TPJ #20 is in press and ready to print, but EarthWeb (the owner of TPJ) has told the printer to stop the presses until further notice. I am currently responding to proposals sent to me with approximately "I don't know if there's going to be another issue, but when I do I'll respond to your proposal."
Since the future of the magazine is in doubt, I can't in good conscience greenlight proposals; I will not encourage an author to spend weeks writing an article when I know that it might never be printed. So I've told people who've asked what I know about the current situation: while EarthWeb has sold many of its properties to internet.com so that it can focus on "career services", it has not sold TPJ. However, EarthWeb has also made it clear that they don't want to publish TPJ any more.
This story has started to leak out to the Perl community and has already mutated a bit in not-quite-correct directions, so I wanted to write this note to set the record straight. Or as straight as I can, given what little I know about EarthWeb's decisions.
While TPJ's future is very much up in the air, people shouldn't take this as any indicator about Perl itself. TPJ was doing just fine back when I ran it, there's no shortage of content out there, and the magazine could easily go bimonthly and then monthly -- indeed, when EarthWeb acquired TPJ I had thought that was the plan. I still enjoy the editing, the authors enjoy the writing, and the designers enjoy the designing. What happens now is up to EarthWeb. And no, I'm not suggesting that people bombard them with email. Heck, they just laid off 100 people, so I'm not even sure who to bombard. Eventually there will be some resolution, and when there is I'll write again to let everyone know.
As of December 27th, this matter is now in the courts, and so I have to adopt the "just the facts" tone of this letter without portraying my opinions. Someday I'll be able to talk more about what is happening in these strange days; until then, you'll have to conjure up your own adjectives on my behalf.
Cheers,
Jon Orwant
I fear you are right. TPJ was the first really good tech journal since BYTE started falling apart in the late 1980's.
