We have enjoyed remarkable continuity here at the Engineered Systems virtual office. I’ll hit my 18-year mark with ES soon. A couple of our columnists were already here and doing their thing when I arrived. Our art director started at BNP Media about six months ahead of me, and our managing editor has been at the company a good while, too. So it’s unusual to announce a change at our publisher’s desk, where Mike Murphy is assuming the helm after 22 years of guidance from Peter Moran.
As such, we’d like to take a moment this month to thank Peter for his work at ES and nearly 30 years at BNP Media. ES wasn’t even monthly when it started, and during Peter’s tenure, it became a leading and profitable book in a competitive sector. The magazine business is not an easy one, and as you may have noticed, publishing in general has gotten a little more complicated over the course of the 21st century. (Along the way, he saw the front end of the incredible growth in the data center industry and also became the founding publisher of Mission Critical Magazine, which has grown in both success and frequency in its own lifetime.)
While he always dealt with the business side with requisite seriousness, Peter was also up for a laugh and full of encouragement for the people on his team. I am especially appreciative of how well Peter treated the editorial side of the operation. Every industry and business has ups and downs over years and decades, but through those cycles, he remained steadfast in protecting the “wall of separation” between advertising and our process on the feature article side of things. Without a doubt, that consistency helped ES earn a solid reputation. I’ll always be grateful for that, his patience with me as I learned the ropes early on, and his flexibility and support as a colleague over the course of our work here.
I join the rest of our staff in wishing Peter all the best in his future endeavors.
THE GOOD NEWS IS …
If Mike Murphy is a familiar name to you, then you already know that we got a great one as far as taking the reins. When I first met Mike, he was a fellow editor in the field and we were crossing paths at the same conferences, etc. (Before that, he had already gained no small amount of valuable perspective on the manufacturer side of the industry.) Even from a distance as part of the competition, Mike made an impression as a friendly guy who knew how to get the job done.
Eventually, BNP Media was savvy enough to woo him over here as editor-in-chief of our contractor-oriented sister pub, the Air Conditioning, Heating & Refrigeration News (aka, The News). A few years after that, Mike moved from the editor’s desk to the publisher’s desk. OK, fine, he probably stayed right there at the same desk, where he will now add publishing ES to his portfolio of duties.
It’s a pleasure to welcome Mike to our team. Not only his personal skill set but his already deep familiarity with the HVAC industry will be a great asset for ES. We’ve thrown around some ideas already, and we’re looking forward to a few new twists on our steadfast mission to deliver the most interesting and most practical info to you each month. ES
