IP: Re: The first of the giants

[Dave Farber <farber@cis.upenn.edu>]

Date: Tue, 27 Oct 1998 16:50:17 -0500
From: "K. N. Cukier" <100736.3602@compuserve.com>
Subject: Re: IP: The first of the giants
Sender: "K. N. Cukier" <100736.3602@compuserve.com>
To: "INTERNET:farber@cis.upenn.edu" <farber@cis.upenn.edu>


Dave,

I'd like to weigh in briefly with a dissenting view to Matthias Fichtner's
claim, in "Der Erste der Giganten"
<http://www.fichtner.net/outlook/1998-12.html>, that Jon's passing was not
noticed by the media. I pay close attention to these things, especially in
my position as Paris correspondent for World Press Review, the NY-based
monthly compendium of the international press.

Strikingly, Jon's death *was* noticed, and widely. The Times of London did
a large obituary and ran a big photo. The Economist magazine also ran it in
the most recent issue. The Financial Times ran a story, and today published
a letter to the editor from Jon's brother about the article. France's
newspaper Liberation published a tribute, although admittedly, I didn't see
anything in Le Monde, despite the newspaper having put Jon on page one last
February when he redirected the root servers.

In the U.S., The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times both had articles
the Monday after his passing, and the NYT version was published in the
International Herald Tribune.

My own experience also confirms the major exposure. I called the deputy
editor of the Wall Street Journal Europe's editorial page to alert him to
the news. I explained that it was important, but would probably take a few
days until the general media picked it up. "What are you talking about?!,"
he said, "it's all over the wires -- AP and Reuters have it." He asked me
to file a column immediately, which they published Wednesday (it appeared
in the U.S. edition the following day).

Fichtner's point, that "Schlimmer sah es nur noch bei den deutschen
Online-Medien" such as Focus, Spiegel, Telepolis, PC-Welt, Internet World
and Online-Today simply suggests the German media didn't cover it.

Jon's death was reported far beyond the trade press and well into the
general media, and received important international exposure, as befits the
impact Postel had on the Internet. Of course he'd be the first to be
surprised by all the attention!

Kenn