Friend Gets Top Job: He Now Knows He Is An HMFIC

 

Mike McCoy, Interim Editor-in-Chief

Chemical and Engineering News

Today I ran into a friend I have known and worked with since the 1990s at a conference in Indianapolis.  As we talked I found out he had recently been named Editor-in-Chief of Chemical and Engineering News magazine.  In his self-effacing way he told me that his promotion was because so many other high-level editors left recently. But he is and always has been a leader able to manage and get great results from a staff of creative people--one of the more difficult management gigs there is.

I first met Mike when he was named the managing editor of Chemical Market Reporter in the late 1990s. That magazine was, at the time, one of five global weekly chemical news magazines. It began as the Oil, Paint & Drug Reporter in the 1870s. Mike managed 20 columnists who covered various markets when many chemical companies still had offices in or around New York City.  

Mike was young and his staff was younger, mostly recent grads of journalism school. They wanted a journalism job in New York. Many of them worked for a year, wrote 50 columns and moved on the other magazines in the chemical news area or business press.  Mike and I talked about staff turn over and management. Half the staff went to new jobs in an average year, but Mike could remain calm dealing with constantly hiring and anticipating the loss of his best writers. His magazine had the lowest pay in the chemical industry, so he knew he was training writers for better-paying jobs.

Years later he moved to C&EN managing the business office located then in New Jersey, now in NYC.  He managed a very stable staff of writers there for more than a decade. Now he has the top job in the Washington-based magazine, at least for a while.  

Mike and his staff gave me a going away party when I went to Iraq 2009. I brought Army field rations so some of the food could be real Army cuisine.  

Since I have known Mike for so long and only in leadership jobs, I was surprised that I told him only today with this new job that he is an HMFIC (Head MF In Charge, the Army generic term for anyone in charge at any level.)

Congratulations Mike--Interim Editor-in-Chief and lifelong HMFIC.

Leaving My Day Job at the End of June

The Othmer Library at Chemical Heritage Foundation

Last July 1 I began working two days per week to spend more time at home.  I tried to do my job in two days per week, but the growing museum and library I work for decided they need a full-time person in my job.  Since that's not me any more, I will be leaving at the end of June.  I have worked here since March 2002--tied with the longest I worked anywhere.  I worked at Godfrey Advertising in Lancaster PA from 1985 to 1998.

Here's the message to the staff from my boss:

Dear colleagues,

Last July Neil Gussman shifted from working full time to working two days per week in order to spend more time with his family. But as CHF continues to grow and evolve, so do our communications needs. It’s become clear that we need a full-time, on-site public relations manager, and Neil has decided to move on. His last day at CHF will be June 30.

Neil began working for CHF as a consultant in 2002 and was hired as a staff member in 2005. He has persuaded editors and reporters far and wide to feature CHF’s work, from a 2006 CHF conference on alchemy that was covered by the New York Times and Marketplace, to the recent review of Books of Secrets in Nature, to repeated coverage in chemical-industry trades such as Chemical & Engineering News and Chemistry International.

As Neil plans his next adventures, please join me in wishing him the very best. CHF will feel a profound lack of puns when he leaves, and holiday parties will never be the same.