PennWell Publishing Case Study

The Situation:

PennWell Publishing was the leading publisher to multiple industries, most significantly in the energy sector. Their flagship publication was the Oil and Gas Journal which had been printed and mailed to subscribers around the world on a weekly basis since 1902. Petroleum industry leaders eagerly awaited their copies each week to know what was happening in the industry. ‍

PennWell was founded by Patrick Boyle in Pennsylvania and moved to Tulsa in 1910. When Boyle died, his son-in-law Frank Lauinger took over. When Frank died, his son P.C. Lauinger became president. P.C. died in 1988 and he was succeeded by his son Philip. In 1991 the company began developing an aggressive growth strategy called "Vision 2000" which led to more than 30 acquisitions and launching more than 80 new magazines, conferences, and other products during the 1990s.

In 1995, Gordon Martin, David Cordeiro and I formed Digital Frontiers, the first web development firm in Oklahoma. We met with PennWell leadership at their headquarters in Tulsa in the first half of 1995. Although both the energy and publishing industries were conservative and resistant to the Internet, a few visionary leaders at PennWell saw the threat that the Internet posed to traditional publishers.

We began working together on a grand vision for creating a portal for the entire energy industry. Through OGJ Online, paid subscribers would get early access to industry news, could access back content (the past 10 years worth), access industry data published by PennWell, and communicate with others in the industry.

This would involve a lot of work. We hired interns to manually convert thousands of articles into HTML, but we also needed to establish a secure portal infrastructure.

Perhaps the most unique part of the project was developing a software package that would be mailed to OGJ subscribers. Most computer users were still on Windows 3.x, so the package needed to include a dialer, an IP stack, and the Internet client software. Since energy executives were skeptical of the Internet, the software couldn't be used to access anything other than OGJ Online.

We partnered with a software development firm to create a locked-down version of the Mosaic browser and the integrated stack. We worked with Pennwell and a marketing firm to package it all together into an attractive package to mail to subscribers (see images below). By the time we launched, we had sold Digital Frontiers to the Williams Companies and we had become WilTel Internet Services.

How I helped:

As part of their Vision 2000 strategic push, a few leaders at PennWell were very open to new ideas, but they needed help from Gordon, David and I to fully develop and implement an Internet future for the company. Specifically I helped by:

• Helping educate PennWell, OGJ, and their IT leadership on the Internet and how it represented both an opportunity and a threat to PennWell.
• Developing a business model for the new platform.
• Implementing the technical infrastructure to support the OGJ Online platform.
• Obtaining licenses for key software elements to build the OGJ Online client software package.
• Managing the development of the OGJ Online software package through KazanSoftware.
• Integrating WilTel's dial-up Internet access solution into the software solution.
• Operating the platform through the launch of OGJ Online.
• Ensuring the OGJ editorial staff had the tools in place to support the online platform going forward.

After launching OGJ Online, we continued to work with PennWell to take online more of their publications serving many different industries.

In the years following the launch of OGJ Online, PennWell's business became increasingly digital and online. The leadership position they established through OGJ Online enabled them to survive and even excel in contrast with most  publishers their size that eventually succumbed to the disruptive power of the Internet.