Editorial: Thanks For The Chance To Fill 500 Papers

You hold in your hand the 500th printed publication produced by the Business Travel News editorial team. This is a note of thanks to you, our readers, as well as to all the sources, editorial board members, reporters, editors, publishers and advertisers who have contributed to the development of this news organization. Your support has given us an awesome responsibility and opportunity: to explain the significance of the latest events and trends to corporate executives involved in making decisions about travel suppliers, and in establishing internal policies, program structure and communications with senior management and travelers.

We at BTN are proud of our history as the primary source of breaking news, insightful analysis and definitive research for the corporate buyers of business meeting and individual travel. We take our charge to pursue editorial excellence as seriously as we do our responsibility to recognize the best practices of business travel buyers.

Business Travel News delivers the inside story to an audience of more than 60,000 savvy professionals in 22 newspapers and seven special reference publications every year.

Business Travel News began in May of 1984. The founding publisher was Michael Leeds, son of Jerry and Lilo Leeds, the founders of CMP Publications, and the chief editor was Mitchell York, who later became BTN's publisher. Jim Alkon, who was Mitch's managing editor, became editor when Mitch followed Michael as publisher.

David McCann, editor-in-chief of sister publication Meeting News, served as managing editor for Jim Alkon and as executive managing editor for BTN's third editor-in-chief David Meyer, who, along with publisher Tim Reid, took the helm in 1993, only a few weeks before Miller Freeman/United News & Media bought BTN. Last September, BTN was bought by VNU Business Media.

Through changes in our ownership and in the industry, you all have made it possible to pursue the serious stories about our increasingly sophisticated business with intellectual depth, integrity and an acute sense of professionalism.

Thanks for the opportunity to keep piling up the pages.