Ed Foster – RIP (1949 – 2008)
dan tynan on Jul 31 2008 at 2:04 am | Filed under: Infoworld, Life, Uncategorized
It was April 2006 1986 and I was greener than green. I’d just gotten my first job in publishing, having managed to persuade Dan Sommer to hire me as a copy editor at Infoworld. When I walked into the news room for the first time and logged into my decrepit ATEX green screen, I felt like I’d walked into a geeky version of The Front Page. There all these “old” newspaper guys who’d been around seemingly forever and brooked no bullshit: Jonathan Sacks, Rory O’Connor, Ed Foster. They were constantly arguing with each other, sometimes at high volume, cracking wise, and cranking out one of the most influential newspapers in Silicon Valley. It was never boring.
Of course, back then the big story was whether IBM would be able to force the PC industry to adopt a new closed standard instead of the old open one. (Answer: No effin’ way.) Things have gotten a little more interesting now. PC technology and the Internet now touch everything in our lives and the issues are as big as they come. And those “old” guys don’t seem so old to me anymore.
When I started writing for Infoworld a half dozen years ago, I was gratified to see that Ed was still a crucial part of the magazine, cranking out his Gripeline column and then as a blog.
Ed did what precious few journalists these days do. He stood up for the little guy. He took on the biggest companies in the high-tech industry and gave them hell. He was tough but fair; if you got criticized, you almost certainly deserved it. Unlike today’s generation of bloggers, he understood that you need to back up your criticisms with solid research and balanced reporting. He spoke truth to power (even to the powers at Infoworld, on occasion), and as a journalist you really can’t do better than that.
His family has asked that in lieu of flowers donations be made to the Electronic Frontier Foundation in his name. Of course. What else would Ed Foster do?
Ed’s passing is a loss for all of us, inside tech journalism and out. He was one of the rare ones.
Ed was one of the “greats”…long live real journalism…