Rambling With Resnick

Rambling With Resnick

For My Next Act...
...now running concurrently with this web site...

By Mason Resnick

"You need to know how to juggle," Herbert Keppler, publisher of Pop Photo once told me when I was a cub editor at Modern Photography who was on the verge of being overwhelmed by a growing, varied workload, and he was my boss. "You also need to set your priorities."

I've been thinking a lot about that advice in the month since I accepted the part-time position of webmaster for PDN Online--and especially since I took over on May 5. How would I handle them, BSMG Worldwide (my other major client) and the half-dozen smaller sites I have or am in the process of designing--and do Black & White World justice?

Well, the bad news is that, for the short term, Black & White World will suffer...a little. The site, as you may have noticed, missed its May update. Updates to The List are on hold until June 1, and the competition is on hiatus until then as well. A few new articles have been added this month, and the forums are still very much alive. Sorry folks, but I have to pay attention to PDN this month and will be putting in extra time there until I get used to things.

The good news is that over the long term I think B&W World will benefit from my association with PDN. There are resources and connections there that I couldn't easily get my hands on as an individual. Fortunately, the folks at PDN know about this site and fully support its continued growth.
About PDN...I will be taking over from Mike Berger, who developed this awesome site from scratch and has been refining it over the last 2-3 years. Taking over a website means learning naming conventions and inheriting an unfamiliar structure, so there will inevitably be a learning curve. I'd like to think running Black & White World prepared me for this, although there are some new tricks I'll need to learn (I've already mastered some of the key ones).

However, joining PDN is a sort of homecoming for me: four years ago, I was the managing editor of Photo Business, a sister publication of PDN. We shared the same office, in the heart of Times Square in New York City. Photo Business folded in September 1993--a victim of the recession, which was hitting the photo industry hard. Before that, I had written a number of freelance articles for PDN and for a short-lived photo retailer trade publication, Imaging Retail News. So my connections with PDN go back over eight years.

In fact, for a while it looked like I would be getting my old desk back (I ended up sitting less than 15 feet from my old Photo Business location).

The staff at PDN has undergone some changes recently--most notably the departure of long-time editor-in-chief Liz Forst--but there are enough familiar faces there to make it seem like old times, and the new team that publisher Jeff Roberts and the new editor-in-chief Holly Hughes has assembled impresses me as being quite talented and enthusiastic.

So begins my next act...as PDN's webmaster. Maybe I should review my juggling lessons.

About the author: Mason Resnick is the editor and publisher of Black & White World and, as of May 5, webmaster of PDN-PIX Online. He can be emailed at bwworld@mindspring.com.