Why do I do this to myself? Bob's first predictions for 2018

Re:Why do I do this to myself? Bob's first predictions for 2... by wmil on Tuesday January 16, 2018 @10:21AM (#16158767)

It's actually a neat story. Infoworld magazine made their authors write under pen names to prevent them from building up personal brand and moving to different publications.

Mark Stephens built up a following under the Cringely name then left in a financial dispute and wanted to keep the name. There was a lawsuit, for a while there were two people writing as Cringely.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_X._Cringely

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Re:Why do I do this to myself? Bob's first predictions for 2... by ghaff on Tuesday January 16, 2018 @01:36PM (#16160736)

> Infoworld magazine made their authors write under pen names

More specifically, a number of tech pubs at the time ran sort of industry insider columns written under pen games. This was partly for practical reasons--they were sort of tech gossip columns and it worked better for the writer's real name not to be widely known. But you're right that it also allowed the magazines to rotate through writers. Another one was Spencer F. Katt at PC Week. There was also a longtime one in a DEC trade magazine although I forget the column's name there.

ADDED: A long time ago, Wired ran a profile on Stephens/Cringely: https://www.wired.com/1998/12/cringely/

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