Humphrey Tyler’s time with Cleaning & Maintenance Management The infant Internet, the creation of CIRI and “sick building” syndrome. By: Phillip Lawless, editor T Phillip Lawless is Editor of Cleaning & Maintenance Management magazine; he can be reached at PLawless@ GrandViewMedia.com. A graduate of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Lawless has over 13 years of professional writing and editing experience. for more info Visit www.cmmonline.com and type in search keyword: Anniversary . For more information on related products, visit www.cmmonline.com , select BUYERS’ GUIDE from the main navigation bar, and enter keyword: CMM . This month, as part of our 50 th anniversary cover-age, we spoke with Humphrey Tyler. Tyler owned Cleaning & Maintenance Management for more than a decade, and during that time he played an important role in the creation of the Cleaning In-dustry Research Institute (CIRI) and CM e-News Daily . Please continue reading to learn more about CMM ’s important contribution to the modernization of the cleaning industry. Phillip Lawless: How did you become involved with, at that time, Cleaning Management maga-zine ? Humphrey Tyler: We started National Trade Pub-lications in 1981, and at the time that we purchased Cleaning Management in 1991, we had three other publications. We were looking to expand, and through a series of letters that we sent out to various publishers of trade magazines around the country, we targeted Cleaning Management . The owners at the time were Nancy and Dan Har-ris. They had owned it, I think, for about 10 years. We purchased the magazine, CM Expo and Clean-ing Management Institute and moved the entire operation to the NTP offices in Latham, New York. PL: When you decided to expand NTP Media, were there specific reasons you targeted the cleaning industry? HT: We were very careful in the search that we conducted to buy another trade magazine. There were a couple of reasons we zeroed in on Cleaning Management . One was that it served a very large industry. There were excellent opportunities for expansion in the in-dustry. Also, it’s a very stable industry. Recessions, economic crises, stock market booms come and go, but buildings have to be cleaned all the time. So the stability of the industry was very important to us. The other thing that was important to us is we felt it was an industry that was greatly misunderstood by the general public. The general public looked upon the janitorial function as some sort of mundane, rou-tine process in which you stick a mop in somebody’s hand and anybody can do it. We felt that particular stereotype of the industry was way off. We felt that the impact that the industry has on public health was greatly misunderstood. And, we thought it was an industry that, as government and the public in general grew to understand the linkage between good cleaning practices and public health, was going to grow and grow in importance. We wanted to be part of that. PL: What developments with Cleaning & Main-tenance Management had a positive effect and helped improve the cleaning industry during your time with the magazine? HT: During the time that we owned Cleaning & Maintenance Management , there were two key de-velopments. One was the evolution of the Internet. The Internet broke on the scene in the mid-1990s, and Cleaning & Maintenance Management was the first media brand in the building services industry to have a website. The website was launched, I believe, 6 CM/Cleaning & Maintenance Management ® • February 2014
CMM – Archives February 2014: 6
