A Hall of Fame Career

Although Cleveland hasn't exactly distinguished itself as a city of sports championships (its last major title was in 1964), the entire Northeast Ohio region has won some acclaim as what's loosely known as the Hall of Fame Corridor, with such tourist stops as the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, the Inventors Hall of Fame in Akron and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.

I recently had the opportunity to attend the induction ceremonies at yet another Hall of Fame, the Cleveland Journalism Hall of Fame, where the legendary John Teresko was honored for his half-century of work on behalf of IndustryWeek and its predecessor, Steel magazine. Let that idea settle in your mind for a moment the idea that somebody could spend 50 years working for the same company and then consider that John Teresko was still producing articles on deadline up until he finally retired.

During my tenure as IW's chief editor, I was John's boss, and if you want to know what exactly that meant, basically it meant I made sure John had a computer, a desk, a phone and an assignment. He took care of the rest, as he'd done for decades before.

One of the great delights throughout his career, and I'm sure one of the reasons why he always retained a twinkle in his eye, was his coverage of emerging technologies, everything from factory automation to product lifecycle management solutions to the latest and greatest lean production tools. John has an appetite for learning that just doesn't know when to say quit (although his tolerance for the more mundane technologies had its limits; he, like the rest of us on staff, often wondered if staring at a spinning hourglass on a computer screen as yet another software patch was automatically updating was the best use of his time).
On the occasion of his 50th year in publishing a couple years ago, I managed to coax some introspection out of John, which resulted in this article. Here's a video from some fellow IW editors reminiscing about John's long tenure here. And here's a videolink to the man himself, receiving his richly deserved, and long overdue, induction into the Cleveland Journalism Hall of Fame.

Congratulations, John! You've done us all proud.