The Foreign Service Journal, April 2018

30 APRIL 2018 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL wrote himself, in the May 1995 FSJ ). His reorganization plans, which resulted in the closure of USIA and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, received far more coverage in the 1990s than the plans for a new Foreign Service act did in the 1970s. As newspapers and novelists have always known, nasti- ness sells. “What This Journal Is All About…” The Journal adopted the slogan “The Independent Voice of the Foreign Service” in 1984, and kept it on the masthead for the next 10 years (its replacement: “The Magazine for Foreign Affairs Professionals”). The slogan raised the question, inde- pendent of whom? Karen Krebsbach, the Journal ’s editor from 1994 to 1997, took an expansive view. Krebsbach, who left the Journal after repeated fights with, in her words, “[AFSA] Gov- erning Board members who believe that only positive pieces about the Foreign Service should be published,” wrote in her December 1997 farewell, “Swan Song from a Lame Duck,” that the Journal “should not be the voice of the State Department, the voice of the Governing Board, the voice of the Editorial Board. It is the voice of the Foreign Service, the voice of its readers.” AFSA President Marshall Adair agreed. “The Journal ,” he wrote in a president’s column in March 2000, “is charged with two responsibilities: Communicating AFSA news and views to the membership, and serving as a forum for lively debate on relevant issues of foreign policy. Of the two, I believe the second is by far the most important. … While [the Journal ] is owned and supported by AFSA, it cannot be a company magazine.” Disagreements between AFSA’s Governing Board and the Journal ’s Editorial Board, he said, are “natural and healthy.” But the Journal was (and is) AFSA’s publication. The Gov- erning Board has ultimate responsibility for, and therefore must have ultimate authority over, the Journal ’s contents. AFSA relies on the Journal ’s Editorial Board to give final approval to articles for publication, and the Journal ’s paid staff—paid by AFSA—handles the day-to-day work, including the editorial, production and business sides of the publication. In 2001, when the AFSA Governing Board (led by Adair’s successor, John K. Naland) directed the Journal to survey its readership, a strong majority of respondents wanted the magazine to devote more space to “professional/personnel/ lifestyle issues.” The board instructed the Journal to follow that guidance. The AFSA board also told the Journal to cut expenses. AFSA’s accounting showed losses for the Journal rising from around $60,000 in 1994 to $220,000 in 2000. (AFSA’s account- ing gave the Journal no budget-line credit for the portion of members’ dues that paid for their subscriptions, inflating a deficit that may not have existed at all.) By mid-2001, Journal editor Bob Guldin, Karen Krebsbach’s successor, had resigned. AFSA moved the Journal ’s associate editor, former Foreign Service Officer Steven Alan Honley, into the top spot. Honley remained as editor until 2014. Early on, he made changes to freshen the publication and strengthen its engage- ment with its readers. He wrote an occasional “letter from the editor” to solicit contributions and feedback, and he pub- lished a calendar of topics on which the Journal intended to focus a year in advance. He used online surveys to track and generate reader interest—a survey on best and worst posts elicited 1,300 responses. Senior Editor Susan Maitra and Associate Editor and former FSO Shawn Dorman became frequent contributors to the Journal , and Honley wrote often for its pages himself. Dorman produced in-depth articles looking at issues of the day, soliciting input from the active-duty Service and thus capturing views not otherwise obvious. The topics included reform at State, Iraq War service (one of which was reprinted in The Washington Post ) and transformational diplomacy. Honley experimented with new features like a personal finance column that responded to questions from readers; and when that flagged, he broadened it to “FS Know-How,” pub- lishing readers’ thoughts about dealing with a range of issues peculiar to Foreign Service life. The “Clippings” section, which published excerpts of interest from the general press (as the Journal had done from its earliest days), became Cybernotes, to bring in material found on the internet. He also introduced T he Journal adopted the slogan “The Independent Voice of the Foreign Service” in 1984.