The dot-com revolution had it half-right.
The internet and worldwide web did change the future of business. But they didn't invalidate the past.
On the assumption that this ever would be so, internet strategy at Oil & Gas Journal and its parent, PennWell Corp., has long emphasized integration of the new with the old, of paper with computer screens, of commerce with content.
Within that strategy, much has happened recently. But integration had to survive a year or so on the outskirts of fashionable thought.
For that heady period-with its instant riches and infatuation with all things new-any strategy connected with old-economy trappings, such as paper and ink, clashed with the clicks-only vision promulgated by dot-com revolutionaries. Inevitably, of course, the clicks-only fantasy crashed against old-economy insistence that somebody, somehow, has to make money out of it all.
PennWell believed all along that the magazines and conferences it brought to this revolution were advantages, not baggage from the past. So while others were spending their seed money on commodity content for whiz-bang web sites nobody ever heard of, PennWell bucked fashion by adapting its old-economy strengths to new-economy technology-and vice versa.
Integration of media
One happy result is the marriage of weekly print and intraday electronic communication. Through this integration of media, OGJ now offers you more industry intelligence than it can provide in print or online alone. If you haven't for a while, check OGJ Online at www.ogjonline.com.
Integration, however, isn't just about content. As has been noted here before, an e-commerce service called Oil & Gas Journal Exchange has been taking shape a mouse-click away from OGJ Online. Or you can go directly to it at www.OGJExchange.com.
OGJ Exchange grew out of acquisitions earlier this year by pennNET, PennWell's internet subsidiary, of an Oklahoma City property exchange called EBCO and a Dallas-Ft. Worth used-equipment broker called Global Logistics Partners. It has quickly developed into an active, web-based, independent trading exchange for the oil and gas industry able to handle all types of transactions, online and offline.
Located right next door to OGJ Online, and sharing financial and company news generated there, OGJ Exchange integrates commerce with content, making the multimedia communications channel multifunctional as well.
Last month, integration took another step when pennNET acquired Madison Energy Advisors Inc., a Houston transaction specialist. OGJ Exchange thus adds to its property-exchange capabilities Madison's advisory services for oil and gas acquisitions and divestitures of any size, through auctions or deal-rooms, live or via the internet.
Madison's services include reservoir evaluation, 3D seismic interpretation, and audits related to upstream and midstream property transactions. The firm also links commerce with content by publishing Weekly Market Review, Quarterly Pricing Poll, and Madison Integrated Database.
Content jockeys
While our e-commerce colleagues have been deepening their side of the channel, by the way, OGJ's content jockeys haven't exactly been marking time.
OGJ Online has a new managing editor who will be steering intraday news toward new pinnacles of service. He's Pat Crow, formerly energy policies editor based in Washington, DC, lately relocated to Houston.
And new professional honors adorn the wall.
Senior Writer Sam Fletcher received Independent Petroleum Association of America's prestigious Lloyd N. Unsell Award for Excellence in Journalism at IPAA's annual meeting last month.
And Folio:, a respected magazine about magazines, this month honored OGJ with its Editorial Excellence Award in the category for trade publications covering energy and utilities. The Folio: award was for the Dec. 13, 1999, special edition of OGJ entitled Petroleum in the 21st Century, project editor for which was Executive Editor Bob Williams.
Watch this space for futher developments. They happen frequently nowadays.
