The Foreign Service Journal, April 2018

When I took over, we were proofreading, marking up and couriering actual blueline pages to our printer, then located in New Hampshire, each month. (And yes, that process was every bit as tedious and inefficient as it sounds.) Now production is done online, with a printer in Richmond, Virginia. As a result, even though the typical issue of the FSJ is at least a third longer than it was back in 2001, it is far less cumber- some to publish it. Early in my tenure, I expanded the practice of pen- ning Letters from the Editor, and introduced or revamped several departments and features that are still around: Talking Points (originally Clip- pings, then Cybernotes), FS Know-How (initially known as FS Finances), FS Heritage and In Their Own Write. I also pioneered the use of the AFSAnet listserv to invite Foreign Service members to share their experiences with various policies and career challenges, as well as responses to wars, terrorist attacks, natural disasters and other international events. Compilations of those contri- butions quickly became, and remain, a cornerstone of FSJ coverage. And, during my tenure we gave the Journal an entirely new and updated look, undertaking a wholesale redesign of the magazine in 2011 after nearly two decades. While I could go on (and on…) about those accomplish- ments, I thought it would be more useful to describe some of the challenges, both inter- nal and external, I faced as editor, and how I met them. However, because the statute of limitations is not quite up yet, where necessary I will withhold names to protect the guilty—and myself. First, allow me to set the stage briefly. In the Beginning I’ve been a dues-paying AFSA member for nearly a third of a century now, ever since joining the State Department in January 1985 with the 25th A-100 class. Part of a massive hiring surge, my class of 52 Foreign Service officers was one of the largest since the VietnamWar era. Beyond dutifully voting in Governing Board elections, I must confess that I wasn’t an active AFSA member during my 12-year career. I read the Journal , of course (though I tended to save up issues for vacations), but I never submitted anything for publication, not even a letter. Shortly after I was tenured in 1989, the Berlin Wall came down and the Cold War entered its final phase. But the much-vaunted “peace dividend” did not accrue to the foreign affairs agencies. Instead, by the end of the 1990s congressional critics like Senator Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) had succeeded in disbanding the Arms Control and Disarma- ment Agency and the U.S. Information Agency, and folding their functions into the State Department. Adding insult to the injury of a mounting workload, State, along with the U.S. Agency for International Development, Foreign Commercial THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | APRIL 2018 43 Steven Alan Honley was editor-in-chief of The Foreign Service Journal from 2001 to 2014, and continues to contribute to the magazine. Prior to that, as a Foreign Service officer from 1985 to 1997, he served in Mexico City, Wellington and Washington, D.C. He is the author of Future Forward: FSI at 70—A History of the Foreign Service Institute (Arlington Hall Press, 2017). December 2001 cover.