Chris Hipwell, the founding editor of Computer Weekly – the world’s first weekly IT newspaper – has died after a short illness.
Hipwell was managing editor and launched the magazine on Thursday, 24 September 1966, for publisher Reed Business Information.
In an interview in April 2011 – when the publication went 100% online after being in print for 44 years – Hipwell said the magazine was created as a spin-off from another Reed title: "I was working at the time on Data Processing, a quarterly magazine. I realised we were missing out lots of stories and quite a lot of revenue was going into recruitment advertising."
He formulated a plan for a weekly IT title in 1965. "At that stage we got a small group together and came up with the idea of a weekly tabloid newspaper printed on news print," he said.
Hipwell edited Computer Weekly until 1976 and was an avid reader of the publication.
07 Jan 2014