Interesting People mailing list archives
IP: Re: The first of the giants
From: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
Date: Tue, 27 Oct 1998 19:51:22 -0500
Date: Tue, 27 Oct 1998 16:50:17 -0500 From: "K. N. Cukier" <100736.3602 () compuserve com> Subject: Re: IP: The first of the giants Sender: "K. N. Cukier" <100736.3602 () compuserve com> To: "INTERNET:farber () cis upenn edu" <farber () cis upenn edu> Dave, I'd like to weigh in briefly with a dissenting view to Matthias Fichtner's claim, in "Der Erste der Giganten" <http://www.fichtner.net/outlook/1998-12.html>, that Jon's passing was not noticed by the media. I pay close attention to these things, especially in my position as Paris correspondent for World Press Review, the NY-based monthly compendium of the international press. Strikingly, Jon's death *was* noticed, and widely. The Times of London did a large obituary and ran a big photo. The Economist magazine also ran it in the most recent issue. The Financial Times ran a story, and today published a letter to the editor from Jon's brother about the article. France's newspaper Liberation published a tribute, although admittedly, I didn't see anything in Le Monde, despite the newspaper having put Jon on page one last February when he redirected the root servers. In the U.S., The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times both had articles the Monday after his passing, and the NYT version was published in the International Herald Tribune. My own experience also confirms the major exposure. I called the deputy editor of the Wall Street Journal Europe's editorial page to alert him to the news. I explained that it was important, but would probably take a few days until the general media picked it up. "What are you talking about?!," he said, "it's all over the wires -- AP and Reuters have it." He asked me to file a column immediately, which they published Wednesday (it appeared in the U.S. edition the following day). Fichtner's point, that "Schlimmer sah es nur noch bei den deutschen Online-Medien" such as Focus, Spiegel, Telepolis, PC-Welt, Internet World and Online-Today simply suggests the German media didn't cover it. Jon's death was reported far beyond the trade press and well into the general media, and received important international exposure, as befits the impact Postel had on the Internet. Of course he'd be the first to be surprised by all the attention! Kenn
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