Many chemists will have heard about some recent upheavals at the American Chemical Society, and specifically with the society’s relationship to its magazine, Chemical and Engineering News. That’s been a constant part of most our lives as chemists, ACS members or not, and to be honest there have always been some friction points in how it operates. Actually, there are a lot of friction points in how the entire ACS operates, when you get right down to it. They’re an organization with dues, and they publish journals, and they run all sorts of national and regional meetings (things common to many scientific societies). But there’s also CAS (Chemical Abstracts), and that’s where a lot of the money comes from (the journals are most certainly not run at a loss, either).

Then you have C&E News, which (to be sure) publishes ACS news (announcements of national meetings, elections for society offices, etc.) but also has for decades been a constant source of just what its full title indicates. That has had the usual range of all trade publications, with slightly-rewritten press releases at the bottom, but the top of the scale has been very good indeed. The magazine has won awards for its coverage, and its writers have been hired away by larger and more famous organizations (which is one of the compliments that journalism pays as a business!)

But the magazine business has been a tough one in recent years. C&E News used to have a lot more advertising in it than it does now, from job listings on up, and that revenue has surely taken a dive (as it has everywhere else). The ACS has enough money to keep C&E News going, but it seems that they aren’t in the mood, as this open letter will make plain. The magazine used to be in the Publications division of the society, but in 2021 it was moved over to the Communications division, which (among other things) is advertising, marketing, and press releases. And that seems to be the direction that things are headed. A number of people left once these changes were announced, while others gave it more time to see how things would play out, and well, here they are playing out. The Editor-in-Chief (Bibiana Campos Seijo) and a widely respected senior editor (Jyllian Kemsley) have just been fired. The official statement about all this is that “This reorganization will better position C&EN for the future, allowing it to strengthen its focus on its role as the official organ for the American Chemical Society”, and doesn’t that just sound exciting. I have been reading issues of C&E News for forty years now, and have resolutely flipped past that stuff the entire time. So having internal ACS news as the new focus with no editorial independence will be just groovy, I’m sure.

At one time I was on the Advisory Board for the magazine, and I would have told the ACS exactly what I’m saying now about this plan: it’s an idiotic attempt to cut costs and to get rid of the occasional headaches caused by hiring real journalists who report real news. Want to know a secret? I’ve hardly been an ACS member for over 25 years now (I know of one year when I needed to join to present at a national meeting). Not having my own subscription to C&E News was frankly just about the only thing I regretted in that whole time. Slick move, folks.