Thirty Year Deal Reached at Swimming World Magazine

PHOENIX, Arizona, November 1. DICK Deal, longtime Publisher of Sports Publications, celebrated his 30th year with the company today. Deal purchased Swimming World and Junior Swimmer magazine along with Swimming Technique magazine from Albert Schoenfeld on Nov. 1, 1977.

"It was a different publishing world back then," reflected Deal. "There was no fax, Internet, nor next day mail service. I remember spending the day before my first Thanksgiving as Publisher waiting for color separations of our December cover shot to come off a plane from Chicago at the LA airport."

Back then, Swimming World Magazine was The Record for the Sport and for many reasons, it still is today.

"The first thing a reporter would bring back to us was the meet results," said Deal. "We would have to hand type every single time, then re-enter them again into a typesetting machine, proof them, correct them, and then send it all to a printer who had to put each page on film. It was a very big deal to add color to the magazine, because it meant creating color film separations for each page.

"Results would come to us by mail from around the world or be called into our 800 number within the U.S. When Mary T. Meagher broke the world record in Brown Deer, Wis., the results came in over a telecopier."

Swimming World Magazine was one of the first publications to purchase Mac Classic computers to begin publishing magazines. Under Deal's leadership, Swimming World Magazine became the official publication of USA Swimming in 1982, while Ray Essick was the Executive Director. Sports Publications International acquired SWIM Magazine in the mid 80s, which later became the Official Magazine of United States Masters Swimming.

As Publisher, Deal supported the publishing of Editor-in-Chief Phil Whitten's work in exposing the East German and Chinese usage of performance enhancing drugs. He also approved the launch of Sports Publications' web site in 1996 called SwimInfo.com, which quickly became the daily news source in swimming. Click here to see a copy of SwimInfo.com's first look more than 10 years ago.

"At the time, we had no idea as to the power of the Internet and where the new media would take us," commented Deal.

Deal is now the President and Chairman of the Board for Sports Publications after turning over the title of Publisher and CEO to Brent Rutemiller back in 2002.

"Dick has been a wonderful friend and my only mentor when it comes to publishing," Rutemiller said. "To have him still be a part of this company after 30 years is an incredible achievement. More impressive is his willingness to try new things and support Swimming World Magazine's venture into multimedia with SwimmingWorld.TV and Swimming World Radio."

Congratulations Dick, for your continued service to the sport of swimming.

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