Do you notice anything different about this issue of Oil & Gas Journal?
Of course you do. Much has changed: the cover, the page design, the type sizes, the organization.
And that's just the beginning.
All this happens in service to a strategy of media integration-a strategy that will offer you much more than a magazine and affiliated web site.
The magazine's new look debuts at the same time that its web site, OGJ Online (www.ogjonline.com), takes a major step forward. Chief News Editor Anne Rhodes previewed that change in this space last week (OGJ, Apr. 24, 2000, p. 17).
Multimedia channel
The parallel efforts central to this integration strategy mean that changes in print plus changes online equal much more than a snazzier magazine and flashier web site.
They strengthen both outlets for information, linking them more closely than before and creating a multimedia channel able to carry more-much more-information.
On the channel's print side, you might have noticed by now that there is no longer a section labeled "News." But you'll still find plenty of news here: in an expanded Newsletter section and in the nontechnical articles that accompany technical features in new, functionally descriptive sections.
But OGJ Online now carries most of the news load-and it's a much larger load than before. The web site now can deliver news as quickly as it's written and edited. And it works with a limit different from that of print: readers' time rather than physical space. That means more articles-but not longer ones.
The long, detailed stories-the technical articles and nontechnical analytical features that require time to read and that merit rereading months or years after they're published-belong and remain in print.
Under the new organization, those articles are easier than before to find. And under the new design, they look better.
The core of the strategy behind these changes is the ability to match material to the medium that suits it best. In the simplest terms, we're channeling timely content in growing volume through the dynamic medium of the internet, and we're giving timeless content a better showcase in the fixed medium of print.
Product and purpose
Vital contributions to these changes came from many people, including the talented technical staff at pennNET Inc., which handles internet properties of its parent company, PennWell Corp., publisher of OGJ.
Decision-making involved many of the print editors, all of whom will be affected by changes in this magazine for which we sweat yellow and black. Their names appear in the staff box.
The new print design is largely the creation of Alana Herron, leader of PennWell's team of OGJ illustrators, who had to balance aesthetics with function and manage demands of a staff zealous about the quality of its product.
For you, the integrated outcome is an ever-growing, ever-changing, time-sensitive menu of petroleum industry intelligence occupying two vital positions on the media spectrum.
And for staff members, introduction of this product consummates several years of planning and effort, complicated by organizational change and capped by several frantic weeks of last-minute checks and fixes. It also officially starts the clock on a new and still-evolving operating routine made necessary by the magazine's content reorganization.
So there's more different about OGJ than meets the eye. But the purpose, as Anne noted here last week, hasn't changed. It is, to use slightly different words than she did, to inform you in professionally useful detail-and in the most useful medium-about every business and technical development important to the oil and gas industry.
