Editorial Career
McHenry's career at Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. began in 1967. After two years, he transferred to San Francisco Productions to work for Mortimer Adler, where he co-edited (with Charles Van Doren) Webster's Guide to American History, A Documentary History of Conservation in America, and Webster's American Biographies. McHenry transferred in 1975 to G. & C. Merriam Co. (later renamed Merriam-Webster Inc.) where he edited Webster's American Military Biographies, Famous American Women, Liberty's Women, and Webster's New Biographical Dictionary.
McHenry returned to Britannica in 1982 as editor of Compton's Yearbook, which was an annual supplement to Compton's Encyclopedia. McHenry later joined the editorial staff of the Encyclopædia Britannica, initially as director of Britannica yearbooks, later progressing to become managing editor of the encyclopedia itself in 1986, general editor in 1990, and editor-in-chief in 1992.
McHenry played a key role in the launch in 1994 of the Encyclopædia Britannica in two electronic forms; a CD-ROM version, Britannica CD, and an Internet version, Britannica Online, which was the first Internet-based encyclopedia.
McHenry believes that Britannica failed to exploit its early advantages in the market for electronic encyclopedias. Britannica had, for example, published the first multimedia encyclopedia (Compton's MultiMedia Encyclopedia) as early as 1989, but did not launch Britannica CD until 1994, one year after Microsoft launched their Encarta encyclopedia. McHenry believes these failures were due to a reluctance amongst senior management to fully embrace new technology, caused largely by the overriding influence of the sales staff and management. The sales personnel earned commissions from door-to-door selling of the print encyclopedias, which McHenry believes led to decisions about the distribution and pricing of the electronic products, being driven by the desires of the sales personnel, rather than market conditions and customer expectations.
Aided by Britannica's failings, Microsoft took a dominant position in the market for CD-ROM encyclopedias in the 1990s. McHenry had little respect for their achievement, which he believed to be the result of, not only large resources and wide market reach, but a "casual disregard for quality work". In particular, in an article in 1996 (which the senior management at Britannica refused permission to publish) McHenry criticized Microsoft for its policy of having factually different versions of the same article in the various national issues of the encyclopedia. McHenry regarded this practice as "pandering to local prejudices" in order to suit local markets, instead of presenting subjects objectively.
McHenry was replaced as the editor-in-chief of the Encyclopædia Britannica by Dale Hoiberg in 1997.
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