January 3rd, 2008

Farewell to ZDNet (and CNET)

Posted by David Berlind @ 9:06 am

Categories: General

Tags: Human Resources, CNET Networks Inc., Media Business, David Berlind

If you were an auditor asked to examine the human resources records of CNET (parent company to ZDNet), you’d discover that even though the company was officially founded in 1992, that there’s a handful of employees whose hire dates actually precede that year. My colleague Dan Farber is one of them. Former MacWeek editor Stephen Howard-Sarin whose name you don’t see too often but who oversees multiple CNET properties including ZDNet is another. My hire date — the day I transitioned from being an IT manager to being a tech journalist — was July 22, 1991.

With so many mergers and acquisitions going on, many of which involve younger companies buying older ones the way CNET bought ZDNet in October of 2000, such “negative employee badge numbers” are probably not unusual. But for some reason that I can’t put my finger on, I’ve always found a strange surrealism in them. Slowly though, as the years have gone by, these anomolies on CNET’s HR books have given way to Father Time who, today, is claiming me as his next victim.

I am moving to CMP where I will be deeply involved with events while at the same time continuing to blog about my second love: technology (the first is my family). As such, this will be my last post on ZDNet.

I’ve already written and rewritten this farewell notice several times. In an attempt to credit the giants on whose shoulders I’ve stood during my last 17 years of tech journalism (not to mention the thousands of readers who have helped to shape my opinions on tech), the initial draft of this blog post was never ending. I wiped it out. At first there were 10 people. Then 15. Eventually 30 and then more . I gave up. There simply isn’t a way to do everyone the justice they deserve without creating a unreadable tome.

So, I will keep the list very short — down to the biggest giants who have, in their own way, enabled my success in fuzzy ways that cannot be easily quantified or characterized: my wife and three children (a fourth is on the way). The media business is intensely competitive and journalism is a travel and time intensive career-choice. The phone can ring at any time with the sort of news that the presses as well as breakfast, lunch, dinner or some other outing must be stopped for.

Thanks to this job, I’ve also been able to travel the world. But it’s never easy leaving the house for the airport when your kids are hanging onto both legs saying “Don’t go!” or you know your going to miss something important while your gone. So, to A, D, S, and N (it’s been my practice to refrain from using their names in this space), thank you for your support from the bottom of my heart.

Finally, it is with incredibly mixed emotions that I am leaving the CNET family of talented and dedicated journalists, editors, staff and readers that I have been with (and who have been with me) for so very long. This company, its managers and my colleagues with whom I’ve worked have always been incredibly kind and generous to me in ways that are simply impossible to enumerate. To them, I say thank you as well for all that you have done for me, both personally and professionally.