Lots of Lifesavers, All in One Package
“That was business as usual,” says Scott Baltic, editor of Homeland Protection Professional. “I don’t think anyone’s going to stand for that in the future. I don’t think the public will stand for it. I don’t think the people whose lives are on the line will stand for it. When you lose 343 lives, that’s an indelible mark.”
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Fire Chief counseled its readers on holding their own in the battle for public dollars, not on burying the hatchet with police commanders. Those guys had their own trade magazines looking out for them–and so did the public health professionals and everyone else with a role in emergency services. These trade magazines might have been produced by the same shop–Primedia Inc. published a raft of trade titles in addition to Fire Chief–but each focused narrowly on its audience’s jurisdiction. Anthony Parrino, who used to be publisher of Fire Chief, calls this a “stovepipe mentality.”
“I continue to be surprised that we don’t really have a lot of competition,” Baltic says. “There are some E-mail newsletters out there, some Web sites, a lot of products. But nobody, so far as I know, is starting up a magazine like this. I’ll knock wood as I say this, but if there were something out there we’d probably know about it–not directly, but from advertisers. We have backgrounds in writing and editing for people like this–we’re not coming out of some unrelated field–and it’s made it a lot easier. I’d hate to have to come up to speed totally on this stuff. My editorial background has been fire rescue and emergency management services. What we really want to do is reach out to law enforcement, to public health and public works, to the private sector–lots of companies are creating security-type positions.”
The EPA backed down. Baltic’s new job has him trafficking in worst-case scenarios that his conversation suggests he’s a little haunted by, but the principle of an informed public isn’t one he dwells on. “We should still look at it in terms of as much openness as we can afford,” he says, “but we can’t afford as much.”
How to choose? The Tribune couldn’t very well sit on the fence: “The question of control is crucial.” So the editorial retraced its steps and took a second, longer look at medicare. “The red tape, confusion and inflexibility built into the system would be hugely magnified….Handing over the drug program to Medicare would raise the possibility that the government would eventually be forced to impose price controls…thereby stifling drug companies’ incentive for innovation. That would be a tragedy.”
