Exhibit City News (ECN) has made more than a decade of its magazine editions available online, giving readers access to industry reporting dating back to March 2015, along with the publication’s 25th and 30th anniversary editions.
The digital archive brings together 66 publications, including 64 regular editions through the fourth quarter of 2026. The collection documents convention center developments, industry personalities, emerging technology, exhibit design, business milestones, and the changes that have shaped the tradeshow and exhibition industry.
The project is part of a broader effort to preserve ECN’s publishing history, which dates back to 1993.
A LOOK BACK AT THE INDUSTRY
The archive offers readers an opportunity to revisit stories that captured the industry at different points in its history, including developments that continue to influence the business today.
In March 2015, ECN published “The Guys Who Power CES,” a feature by Zeenath Haniff examining the network infrastructure supporting the Consumer Electronics Show at the Las Vegas Convention Center. The article detailed how Cox Business expanded wireless coverage to accommodate tens of thousands of connected devices, including approximately 2,000 wireless access points installed for CES 2015.
Two years later, the May/June 2017 edition featured Richard Erschik, known as the “Dean of Exhibitor Education.” Written by Arthur Bloomberg, the profile traced Erschik’s career and his efforts to help exhibitors turn tradeshow leads into sales. The story explored a challenge that remains familiar to exhibitors: converting the expense of participating in a tradeshow into measurable business results.
The November/December 2021 edition captured another turning point as the industry worked to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. In “The Don & Mike Show is Back on the Road,” Mike Morrison described the podcast’s return to industry gatherings and renovations to ECN’s Las Vegas offices, including a recording studio for video and podcast production.
Together, these stories illustrate how the archive preserves both industry developments and the experiences of the people working behind the scenes.
PRESERVING ECN’S PUBLISHING HISTORY
ECN has covered the tradeshow and exhibition industry for more than 33 years, beginning in 1993.
The online collection currently includes bimonthly magazine editions from 2015 through 2021 and quarterly publications beginning in 2022. Readers can also explore ECN’s 25th and 30th anniversary editions, which look back at the publication’s history and the industry’s evolution.
Work is underway to digitize ECN’s earlier newspaper editions, published before the transition to the magazine format. Those issues represent an additional chapter in the publication’s history and contain reporting from earlier decades of the exhibition business.
As the older newspapers are digitized, ECN plans to expand the online archive, making more of its historical coverage accessible to readers.
AN EXPANDED DIGITAL READING EXPERIENCE
The archive complements ECN’s recent transition from Issuu to Heyzine, which brought the digital magazine reading experience directly to ExhibitCityNews.com.
The new platform includes page navigation, search, zoom, fullscreen viewing, and interactive links. Readers can explore digital editions without leaving the ECN website or open individual issues in a separate browser tab.
ECN introduced these features in its Oct. 1 article, How to Read the New Exhibit City News Digital Edition.
The magazine archive adds another dimension to ECN’s growing digital library, which is approaching 17,000 published posts covering the tradeshow and exhibition industry.
EXPLORE THE ARCHIVE
The collection provides exhibition professionals, researchers, and longtime readers with a way to revisit the companies, people, and events that have shaped the industry over the past decade, while the ongoing digitization project aims to make even more of ECN’s history available.
Explore the ECN Digital Magazine Archive here.
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