Sal Marino, one of the founding fathers of IndustryWeek and former CEO of Penton, IW's parent company, passed away this past Thanksgiving day, but in an important way he has not left us. His spirit lives on and continues to inspire via the pages of IndustryWeek, the publication he championed and helped bring into existence.
Sal joined Penton in 1952 as promotion and research manager of Steel magazine, a metalworking weekly that he helped transition into IndustryWeek. Upon joining Steel, Sal discovered a content gap -- manufacturing -- that no publishing company was serving. Both the magazine and its competitors were tightly organized around the industry vertical of metalworking, notes his son Michael, CEO of Cleveland's Wyse Advertising. "He found no management magazine was serving the manufacturing gap between the industry verticals like Steel and the business horizontals such as BusinessWeek."
That realization propelled Sal's thinking toward directing a publication that would serve readers across the entire scope of manufacturing. His insight led to a publication -- IndustryWeek -- designed to be a resource for managers in all of manufacturing, adds Michael.
Sal became vice president in 1964, having progressed from assignments as Steel's research and promotion manager, business manager and publisher. At the time of IW's debut in January 1970, Sal was executive vice president of Penton. He was elected as board member and president in 1971. In 1995 he retired as Penton's chairman and chief executive officer.
His dedication to IW readers continued into retirement with a column entitled "Straight Talk," which ran until 2000.
