I have to admit, writing editorials and columns has been one of the most enjoyable parts of my journalism career over the years. My first appearance on an editorial page, for the Athens News many years ago concerned Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' breakfast cereal, marketing to children, and "evil corporate boogerheads." It kind of set the tone for the rest of my editorial page endeavors.
Following is a list of columns written for Electronic News over the years. These are not all of the columns, just some of the best, in my humble opinion. The ones in bold are the ones written during the years when I was under investigation by the FBI and Major League Baseball for steroid use.
Actually, this just denotes my personal favorites.
If you only read one of these, read this one. This column is the end result of what happens when journalism majors are allowed to minor in English during college; my apologies to the Bard, William Shakespeare.
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Below are some direct links to examples of the work I did for Electronic News. You can also visit the E-News/EDN site and search for my byline, "Jeff Chappell." You'll also find a link below to earlier work.
I should note that Electronic News, unfortunately, no longer exists as a separate entity, either online or in print; several years ago Reed Business folded the Web incarnation completely into EDN Magazine—40 some years after Electronic News began covering the nascent chip industry.
Traveling the Silicon Road - October, 2005
In October of 2005 I embarked on a special project for Electronic News: find the cultural and economic truth of China as it pertains to its burgeoning semiconductor industry—all within one month. An impossible task for such a brief amount of time, but in my month of traipsing about China to points north, south, east and west, I managed to drill down a little deeper into Chinese culture than most business travelers do, as you can see not only from the stories that I filed, but the personal blog that I maintained while traveling on the Silicon Road.
Change Those SOX and Expense Those Options - Dec. 22, 2005
Stock options were a sore subject for business even before the widespread evidence of backdating and ensuing drama that ensued in the financial world in 2006. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), enacted in 2002 in the wake of several major accounting scandals among publicly held companies, changed the way all public companies did business, and the chip industry was no exception.
Intel/Micron/Apple Deal Spawns Stock Sell-off - Nov. 22, 2005
The circle of life: semiconductor technology begat the Internet; the Internet begat instant communication; instant communication begat day trading; day trading begat headaches for semiconductor industry executives; the craziness of it all begat amused editors.
And the August Merger Plot Thickens ... - Feb. 9, 2005
... So What's All the August Fuss About? - Feb. 9, 2005
Tug-o-war is a fun game, particularly when it involves cutting-edge technology, millions of dollars and lawyers.
Gazing into the Magic 8-Ball - Dec. 21, 2004
When forecasting the near-term future of business cycles in the semiconductor industry, the answer is almost always "outlook cloudy; try again later." But sometimes you can manage to get a relatively clear picture ...
Mattson Sheds Wet Clean Business - February 12, 2003
"The best laid plans o' mice and men"—and chip industry executives—often went awry and left "naught but grief an' pain/For promised joy" in the wake of the tech bust of 2001 (apologies to Robert Burns).
C'mon, you know you want to see some of the earlier stuff. As well as the sum total of my modeling career: me in a cleanroom bunny suit -- total hawtness!
"There are men who can write poetry, and there are men who can read balance sheets. The men who can read balance sheets cannot write. Of necessity, we made the discovery that it is easier to turn poets into business journalists than to turn bookkeepers into writers."
--Henry R Luce, on recruiting staff for Fortune