Norman Cahners

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Reed Business Information
(U.S) in 2002, and its headquarters moved from Boston to New York.

Early life

Cahners was born in

U.S. Olympic Team in 1936 but boycotted that event because the games were to be held in Nazi Germany. As if in compensation, Cahners was one of two Harvard undergrads selected to speak at the Harvard Tercentenery Ceremonies in 1936, before an audience of 10,000 alumni, and over a worldwide radio hook-up.[2]
Cahners was also elected president of the Harvard Class of 1936 and was later inducted into the Harvard Varsity Athletic Hall of Fame.

From materials handling to publishing empire

While directing the U.S. Naval Ordnance Materials Handling Laboratory at the Hingham Naval Ammunition Depot,

materials handling
, inventing and patenting a 'four-way pallet' which became the military and later industry standard. The magazine gave contractors advice on how to ship goods for the Navy using the new pallet and forklift system.

The Navy let Cahners and his adjunct Saul Goldweitz (who became his lifelong business partner) take both the laboratory and the magazine private after the war and it became Modern Materials Handling. Cahners began acquiring other magazines in 1956, starting with Metalworking, and launching still others. Abandoning his first career in materials handling, he became one of the pioneers of 'niche-publishing', founding journals to appeal to specific business audiences and loading them with information and advertising. Cahners Publishing had grown to 90 magazine titles by the time of Cahners’ death, the best-known being Variety and Publishers Weekly. The company was headquartered in the Boston suburb of Newton.[3] The first Cahners magazine, Modern Materials Handling, is still published today by Peerless Media, a B2B media company located in Framingham, MA.

Philanthropy

Cahners and his wife Helene became major philanthropists in Boston. There is a Cabot-Cahners room in

Mt. Holyoke College, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and numerous Boston-area hospitals.[4]

Memorials

Reed Business Information dispenses the Norman L. Cahners Life-Time Achievement Award in recognition of the "outstanding, creative use of the business press in the marketing of products and services". This is one of the prestigious CEBA (Creative Excellence in Business Advertising) Awards. Recipients have included the CEO's of

Time-Warner, General Electric, and NBC
.

A second Norman L. Cahners Award is presented by the Materials Handling Industry of America through their Material Handling Education Foundation. Cahners himself won the organization's Reed Apple Award.

In 1970 Cahners was named "Man of the Year" by The Advertising Club of New York.[5]

References

  1. ^ James Terry White, ed., The National Cyclopedia of Biography, vo. 49 (1967), p. 43
  2. ^ Harvard Crimson, May 20, 1936
  3. ^ "Reed Wants Even More Magazines", New York Times, April 8, 1988; New York Times Norman L. Cahners obituary, Mar. 18, 1986
  4. ^ Alex Beam, "The Cahners have Left the Building", Boston Globe, Feb. 17, 2005; Bangor Daily News, June 9, 1972, p. 87
  5. ^ Bangor Daily News, Dec. 8, 1970, p. 36

Further reading

  • Maas, Steve. In a Niche by Himself: The Norman Cahners Story.
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