I was saddened to hear that the mining and metals industry’s only truly global weekly business-oriented paper publication, Mining Journal has been relegated to fortnightly, having been a weekly for over 180 years, including maintaining weekly publication through two world wars.
As a former CEO of Mining Journal I feel deeply that this is a retrograde step and is a direct result of a failed attempt to transform a publishing company run by people whose hearts and souls were steeped in the mining industry to what is nowadays in effect a conference company run by professional event organisers and publishers.
The publications are now seemingly primarily a means for promoting the company’s various events. Perhaps this is necessary for a specialist publishing company to stay afloat in this day and age, but its whole ethos has changed as a consequence.
Time was when Mining Journal Limited under Michael West’s guidance from the 1960-90s and then later under my own for the final decade of the 20th Century and into the beginning of the 21st, employed no less than 15 qualified and experienced mining engineers, geologists, metallurgists and mineral economists to run the publications and its various divisions – more than most London-based mining consultancies at that time.
We would not take editorial staff on unless they had prior mining, geological or metallurgical industry experience. It was very much an integral part of the industry we served rather than a publishing company which just happened to have an interest in mining.
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