Fackpress inom dataområdet: Exempel från 1960- och 1970-talet: Transkript av ett vittnesseminarium vid Tekniska museet i Stockholm den 14 oktober 2008

The witness seminar ”Fackpress inom dataområdet: Exempel från 1960- och 1970-talet” [Professional Magazines Concerning Computers and Computing: Examples from the 1960s and 1970s] was held at Tekniska museet [the National Museum of Science and Technology] in Stockholm on 14 October 2008 and led by Patrik Lundell. It dealt with the rise of magazines that focused on computers during the 1960s and 1970s. Representatives from magazines with different perspectives about computers were invited to the seminar. The seminar highlighted the different character each magazine withheld, also concerning the organization of the magazines in question and the ideas behind this. Furthermore the magazines’ varying approaches to ideas concerning whether or not people skilled in technology were needed in the editorial staff, in order to pursue the journalistic work about computers were discussed. The seminar also discerned how the journalists experienced how computer companies with different methods tried to affect the magazines’ ways of reporting about the companies and their businesses. This was usually carried out in a way that the journalists at the seminar experienced as a method for the computer companies themselves to control the actual reporting. One example of this method is that of the magazines’ funding. Since the magazines depended heavily on income from advertisements in the actual magazines made by the computer companies, the companies threatened to withdraw their advertisements from the magazines when they disagreed with the content of the published material.