Microwave Journal is celebrating its 65th year, can you tell us about the history of the company?
In the 1950s as radar and communications technology transformed into commercial applications after the war, the microwave community was expanding quickly. Many of these companies were looking for new customers and applications so there was a need to share information about the technology and the issues faced by these young businesses since this was not the focus of existing IEEE publications.
Recognizing this need, William Bazzy and Ted Saad joined forces in 1958 to launch Microwave Journal as a platform to exchange technical and business information related to RF and microwave technology. William Bazzy was a savvy businessman and Ted Saad was a technical expert that was involved in launching Microwave Development Labs and founded Sage Laboratories prior to joining Bazzy to start Microwave Journal.
Ted Saad became a leading advocate for publishing technical information as he witnessed how the RadLab series from MIT Radiation Labs had become a foundation of microwave engineering at the time. By 1958, Ted had gained some editorial experience working with IEEE Transactions and had knowledge of technical article editing and reviewing.
William Bazzy learned communications and electronics engineering while serving in the military in the 1940s. As a young radio and television broadcast engineer in Boston, he participated in the growth of national broadcast networks, including working at RCA Technologies. Seeing a need for technology information to serve professionals in the broadcasting and communications industries, William and his brother Emil, who had a printing press, organized Horizon House Inc. to pursue their publishing venture in Microwave Journal.
The Bazzy brothers handled the production of the magazine and the business of selling advertising. Bazzy was the publisher and Saad served as the magazine’s first technical editor. They brought together a team of engineering colleagues that would solicit and review articles from the community at large, with notable contributions from industry pioneers such as Seymour Cohn, Henry Jasik, Ben Lax, Marshall Pease, Tore Anderson and Gershon Wheeler — and Microwave Journal was born.
In the 1970s, Horizon House/Microwave Journal worked with IEEE MTT-S to launch an exhibition for the IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Symposium (IMS), managing the event for close to 30 years until 2009 and again from 2019 until today. Horizon House/Microwave Journal continued to expand its exhibition activities, managing European Microwave Week on behalf of the European Microwave Association since 2003 and launching its own event platform, Electronic Design Innovation Conference (EDI CON), in China in 2013 and in the U.S. in 2016.
In 2012, Microwave Journal launched a Chinese language version, Microwave Journal China, and in 2017, Signal Integrity Journal was introduced as an online magazine to serve high speed, digital design engineers, as the demand for design information about signal integrity, power integrity and EMI increased.
Today, Horizon House consists of Microwave Journal/Signal Integrity Journal; Telecom Media Group, with its M2M events and IoT council; and leading technical book publisher Artech House. Horizon House has an office in London in addition to its Norwood, Mass., headquarters—all of which started with Bill and Ted’s vision for Microwave Journal 65 years ago.
The publishing industry has gone through many changes over the years, how has Microwave Journal adapted to those changes?
Publishing over the years remained fairly unchanged until the Internet was launched in the 1990s. Microwave Journal recognized this change quickly and was one of the first publications to launch a website in the early 90s. At the beginning, digital marketing was not seen to have much value as the online audience was small, so the cost of digital promotional programs was low. But as the audiences grew, email and banner ads were widely adopted as marketing tools. The same was true with social media which started off as a free service but has now evolved into formal marketing programs.
Microwave Journal was the first in the industry to launch a mobile app and first to launch an online event in 2017, EDI CON Online, well before the COVID-19. We started our online panel sessions in 2021 which today, with EDI CON Online, are popular ways to get educational information for engineers and provide lead generation for our clients.
We are providing more online content these days in the way of technical articles, white papers, eBooks, blogs, podcasts, videos, etc. Our video platform (https://videos.microwavejournal.com) allows clients to have their own channel and we pull all of their videos in from YouTube or Vimeo automatically, so no effort is needed on their side. We also do a weekly video newsletter to promote these to our audience. Our podcast series called RF Industry Icons (https://podcasts.microwavejournal.com/category/industry-icons) has interviewed legends like Marty Cooper, Ted Rappaport, Irwin Jacobs, Ulrich Rohde, Steve Cripps, Ferenc Marki, Les Besser and more.
We still have a strong magazine product that is available in any format an engineer wants to digest the content including print, digital, online and app versions of each issue. Most of our competitors have stopped printing their issues but we will continue to produce the print magazine as long as engineers want to read it. There is a great benefit to having physical issues of the magazine at trade shows, on engineers’ desks and in lobbies of our customers where they can be shared with many people.
In 2018, we tried Augmented Reality with our 60th anniversary June issue and will be looking to incorporate AI into our editorial process and marketing analytics. We are always striving for editorial excellence and ways to engage engineers with valuable technical information. These technologies will have a strong effect on the future of publishing.
What is the process of submitting and publishing an article?
Authors can submit articles directly to the editors. Each one is reviewed by members of the Editorial Review Board who have expertise in the topic being covered. Once the article passes the review, many are rejected, it is edited for technical clarity and grammar according to our style guide which is based on AP standards. Many other articles are recruited directly by the editors working with companies, universities or research organizations who have interesting technologies that they think the readers will be interested in learning about. Articles can be technical articles, applications notes, special reports, perspectives or product features. If you have an article idea, email one of us today!
How has Microwave Journal maintained its quality and leadership in the industry?
It starts with the quality of our people — we have enjoyed having great employees to run the magazine operations, publishing, editorial review and digital marketing areas. We have always hired high-quality editors who understand RF and microwave technology along with the engineering audience we serve.
We also have an editorial review board made up of the best technologists in the industry in the sectors they represent. These volunteers give us advice and help ensure the highest quality articles in the industry.
While the IEEE journals track the advancement of technology, they miss the evolution of the markets and the companies that serve them. Microwave Journal is the closest we have to an archive of the industry, stretching back to 1958, about the time the industry took shape. IEEE journals are also more academically focused covering technology early in its development while Microwave Journal focuses technology for practicing engineers so is more focused on technologies that are closer to launch or currently being used in industry.
Lastly, we have always remained true to our mission to provide unique, high-quality articles, application notes, business perspectives, product information and news that is relevant to the high frequency audience. We provide this quality content in a focused and timely manner, so engineers do not have to sift through a bunch of information to find what they need.
What future plans do you have for the company?
I am happy to announce that we are launching Microwave Journal University in partnership with Mini-Circuits and Interlligent, and will be rolling out educational information and initiatives for high school and university students along with those that want to learn the basics about electromagnetic waves. We also plan to have significant content on the basics of mmWave technology working with companies like TMYTEK. This effort will include scholarships, design contests and videos/articles on the basics of electromagnetics.
With the importance of power management and power integrity growing in both the analog and digital design realms, we will be launching new tutorials addressing these needs. We are working with Qorvo on a new blog series addressing this area of technology and working with Samtec on the power and signal integrity side for tutorials.
We have recently launched a couple of new podcast series including B&S on Aerospace and Defense, sponsored by Analog Devices and hosted by experts from ADI and BAE Systems, and RF Industry Icons. Both have a growing audience, and we now have close to 300 total podcast episodes with more than 85,000 downloads to date. We plan to expand our footprint in this area alone with more video series.
On the events side, this year has marked a return to pre-COVID attendance levels. Our parent group, Horizon House, is working with the IEEE and EuMA to grow the IMS and EuMW events. We hope to launch new initiatives to expand each event in step with each society’s strategic goals.
In the future, we do think that augmented reality can be a great tool to link the physical magazine to the digital world and create unique experiences to more educational material for our readers. The nice animations of simulation platforms might be a natural fit for this technology. While AI is all the rage in many markets, we are exploring ways to incorporate it into our editorial and marketing intelligence but think this is still in its infancy although evolving quickly.