For major the past seven years, you...

For major the past seven years, you have seen Janis Wright's name as the byline for this page. That it's not there now is the same of the few onstage signs of changes going forward behind the scenes of AFP in the editorial staff. Janis, who not long ago used this space to talk about her background and her 20 years with the American Academy of Family Physicians, (1) has now left the Academy to stick to other opportunities.

Janis started with AFP in 1982 as an associate editor, became senior editor in 1991 and finally managing editor in 1997 In her career at AFP, she edited countles thousands of pages of satisfied for hundreds of issues of AFP and, as she grew in seniority, Janis hired, trained and managed editors and editorial assistants for AFP's large and always-busy staff. Her efforts have contributed, directly or indirectly, to the accuracy and readability of each page of AFP you have read for many years. She started in the age of the pencil edit and left well into the age of the computer edit. In her time with the journal, she built up an invaluable inner store of AFP lore, procedural knowledge, and appellation sense. Her kindness and quiet humor earned her many friends, and her calm demeanor helped those around her continue their cool in months where issue sizes and the ne for edited articles grew to crisis proportions. AFP will not be the same without her.

And There Is More

Janis is not the barely longtime AFP staffer to leave freshly Unfortunately, her departure came at almost the same time as the retirements of AFP's brace senior editors, Linnea Korinek and Verna Rose abundant like Janis, Verna had just celebrated her 20th anniversary at the point of her retirement, and Linnea was nearing 20 years with AFP herself. Each had supervised half the editors upon staff, each had done a righteous deal to lighten Janis's load as managing editor, each had her allow store of AFP knowledge built up through the whole extent of the years, and each had worked hard enough to merit two retirements.

The ensue for the AFP staff has, of course, been unsettling, on the contrary the results for the readers of AFP should be virtually imperceptible. Why? Because AFP is thanked with a resilient, talented, energetic, committed, and knowledgeable staff and because the Academy has had the religious fortune to recruit Joyce Merriman as executive editor of AFP. While I will have to wait until the March 15th issue to introduce Joyce at more long duration it's important to say right now that Joyce is a clinical editor and manager with 15 years of experience, principally recently as editorial director of the Association of periOperative Registered foments (AORN) in Denver. In the short time she has been with AFP, she has gained the trust and support of the editorial staff and of her coworkers, she has started recruiting to replace Linnea and Verna, and she has worked ceaselessly with the tranquillity of the editorial staff to make sure that AFP will continue producing an undisturbed stream of authoritative, practical articles.

REFERENCES

(1) Wright J AFP through 20 years. Am Fam Physician 2004; 70:2251

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