How many publishing companies have published Dr. Dobb’s Journal?

Jon Erickson, editor-in-chief of Dr. Dobb’s Journal, totally stumped me yesterday. He asked me how many companies had published DDJ, and I guessed four. The correct answer is five.

Dr. Dobb’s was founded by

1. People’s Computing Company (PCC)

which sold DDJ to

2. M&T Publishing, the U.S. subsidiary of the German media giant Markt und Technik Verlag AG.

M&T Publishing was then sold to

3. Miller Freeman Inc. (MFI), a subsidiary of United News & Media (now United Business Media).

UBM then merged MFI into another division, the newly purchased

4. CMP Media LLC

which last week split up, retiring the CMP name, with DDJ going into the new business unit called

5. Think Services.

I flat-out forgot about PCC.

Here’s a great article on the earliest history of DDJ, which was founded as a newsletter to distribute technical information about Tiny BASIC, a language designed for 1970s-era microcomputers like the MITS Altair.

Over time, and under the editorial leadership of Michael Swaine (1984-1987), Tyler Sperry (1987-1988) and Jon Erickson (1988-), DDJ expanded its coverage to become a beloved hobbyist/enthusiast publication like Byte. CMP Media ceased publishing Byte a decade ago, in 1998. I’m glad that DDJ is still around.