Our Town Hall Meeting

Last week, Friday at 4:15, all of us at CFM received an e-mail requesting our attendance at a "Town

Peter Esposito

Hall Meeting" scheduled for today at 3:00. That, combined with a notice to clean our offices because "visitors" would be with us today and tomorrow, bred some concern about what would be announced at this required meeting.
As it turns out, it was nothing too dramatic. Peter Esposito explained that he is now Group President for New Mountain Learning, a combination of three textbook and education publishing enterprises in Minnesota with the two CFM Publishing companies located in Cincinnati, Standard Publishing and RCL/Benziger. The combination will create greater synergies of shared technologies as well as other benefits. Wicks, the private equity group that bought Standard Publishing in 2006, still owns us as well as the Minnesota concerns.
With Peter's expanded responsibility, he has named two Vice-presidents and General Managers, Jeff Seng for RCL/Benziger and Matt Lockhart for Standard Publishing. The new title will add marketing to Matt's current responsibilities for product development at Standard. I think he'll do a great job!

Marking the Day, Measuring My Words

What can I say about Dale Reeves and Shawn Krumm? Many things, but the most timely thing to say is that they are two of six members of Standard Publishing's editorial and creative services departments laid off yesterday as we experienced yet another reduction in force. The other four—Ruth Frederick, Steve Clark, Bob Korth, and Marcy Levering—represent some of Standard's longest-term employees. Dale has been with us for 22 years, and at least three of the above four for much longer.
We received a letter explaining that since year over year sales continue to fall, there is just no choice but to cut back our number of employees. At least it didn't use the word that has been reported to have been uttered by some in upper management. Their category for editorial employees: "overhead."
"I'm sorry about yesterday," CEO Peter Esposito said to me in the hallway today. I hesitated, measuring my response, and said finally, "Well, we're all sorry about it, Peter," and then walked away.
That's all that was prudent to say to him or in this public forum. But since I'm writing a diary, I took Dale's and Shawn's picture today to mark the time when this, not the first disappointment at Standard, has happened. We're praying for wisdom, grace, and joy, and actually it was encouraging to see all three displayed by Shawn and Dale today as they packed up their offices for their last day to work for us.
Meanwhile, I'm not discouraged in my own work, because some positive developments for the future of the magazines seem in store. Shawn McMullen and I are standing at a booth space dedicated primarily to The Lookout and Christian Standard at the International Conference on Missions in Indianapolis this week. I spent time today finishing up preparations for the trip, including two presentations: a workshop Friday and a pitch to college presidents tomorrow for student subscriptions to Christian Standard.

Plenty to Eat on Boss's Day

Guess what today was? Boss's Day! I had forgotten that till I got to work today and found nice cards on my desk and then a spread of breakfast (and lunch!) goodies and sweets to celebrate the day. Then at lunchtime the adult department folks also brought food--plenty for their lunch and then baked beans and barbecue and potato salad and more for anybody else who wanted to enjoy their bounty.
I spent most of the day waiting to be called into a budget meeting, but I didn't actually go into the meeting till 5:30 and didn't speak to my own budget in that meeting till about 7:00.
But we had a free and animated discussion during the next hour, and I really appreciated the time I was able to spend with the president.
I'm writing this with one ear listening to the president and Governor Romney in the second presidential debate. I won't venture a guess about who's "winning."

The Magazines staff at Standard Publishing:
Shawn McMullen, Diane Jones, Jim Nieman, Sheryl Overstreet

Smiling Faces, a Beautiful Day

Marshall Hayden (right) was in the office to meet Peter Esposito, the CEO of CFM Religion Publishing, the umbrella company that owns Standard Publishing. Marshall is chairman of Standard's Publishing Committee. He met with Peter and me and Matt Lockhart to discuss ways the Publishing Committee can advance the ministry of Standard Publishing. We're hoping much of the Committee can meet Peter in Orlando before or after the North American Christian Convention this summer.

I took Marshall to lunch at First Watch after our meeting with Peter. It was a glorious, sunny spring-like day. I'm so glad I wasn't holed up in the office from 8 till 5.

On the way to my car in the early evening, I paused to snap pictures of the daffodils, already showing a few buds on four-inch stems in the flower beds around the trees at our office complex. I'll photograph them again later--either in bloom, or covered with snow, or both! We'll see.