Change. It has become a buzzword in today's business world. There are seminars to help us manage it, techniques to help us cope with it.
We've come to expect change in our work lives. Some of us even welcome it.
But events at Oil & Gas Journal last week proved that, no matter how much time we spend anticipating and planning for a change, it can still sneak up and surprise us.
For 6 months, the Journal staff has been planning for the major changes that the magazine and its internet site will undergo only 1 week from the date this issue is published. But even after all that planning, when the realization sank in as this issue was being completed that it would be the last of a certain type, I found myself in a state of shock.
What's beginning
The biggest change that the publishing industry has had to cope with in recent years is the advent and extraordinary growth of the internet. It changes everything.
For a weekly magazine such as Oil & Gas Journal, the rapid development of the internet as a business tool has prompted a reexamination of every facet of our strategy.
Oil & Gas Journal embraced the internet early in its development. In the early 1990s, OGJ introduced a dial-up internet bulletin board, and in 1995, a full-fledged website called Oil & Gas Journal Online (www.ogjonline.com). Starting May 1, OGJ Online will take another leap forward with the launch of a free internet news service.
On that date, the Oil & Gas Journal news team will begin posting OGJ news stories to our web site, in real time, as they're written and edited. To put this in industry terminology, our news function is moving from batch-process mode to continuous-flow mode.
This is an exciting development, designed to keep OGJ readers informed of important developments in the petroleum industry as they happen. It is a profound change in the way we operate. And we can't wait.
What's ending
With every exciting beginning, however, comes an ending. For the writers and editors on the online team, what's coming to an end is the weekly Wednesday news deadline.
This has been a part of our lives for years (or, for some of us, decades). But starting next week, the online news staff will no longer work toward a weekly deadline. We won't even work toward a daily deadline. It will be more like a constant, ceaseless deadline.
This may sound stressful, but I prefer to think of it as spreading out the weekly stress load over a much greater period.
This is the change that took me by surprise as the Journal staff was putting the finishing touches on this issue. Although I have worked toward this goal for months, building a team of experienced oil and gas reporters and editors to handle the increased work load, the realization that I was preparing for my last Wednesday news deadline hit me with surprising force. It was almost as if no one had ever mentioned that the years of batch-process mode were coming to an end.
In this same space in next week's issue, OGJ Editor Bob Tippee will explain how this change, and others, will enhance Oil & Gas Journal's editorial mission: to provide you, the reader, the information you need to make sound business decisions every day. Stay tuned.
