Living history up close

Oct. 4, 2010
If you're aware that you're part of something that will be remembered as important, a watershed moment, there's a tendency at times to stop and try to appreciate the significance.

Living through history can excite…and frighten.

If you're aware that you're part of something that will be remembered as important, a watershed moment, there's a tendency at times to stop and try to appreciate the significance.

Of course, if you're certain only that you're in the middle of something historically important but unsure whether it or your role will be remembered with the hope for appreciation, then holding your stomach out of your throat becomes a struggle.

Fortunately for current Oil & Gas Journal editors, it is certain that in 2010 we are making OGJ history as almost no other OGJ editor in its 108-year history can claim. We can also feel certain that what we're part of will ensure OGJ stays around for another 108 years.

The event, of course, is the recent reconfiguration of Oil & Gas Journal: Printing a large, glossy magazine on the first Monday of each month, then publishing electronically every Monday other than the first a version that covers global oil and gas news and statistics, with general interest articles and weekly columns. And complementing these two products are daily, weekly, and monthly electronic newsletters that keep readers thoroughly informed.

In this space in the first monthly print edition (OGJ, Aug. 2, 2010, p. 20), OGJ Editor Bob Tippee described what the magazine is doing, how, and why. I won't repeat what was so well explained.

But I thought it might be interesting to OGJ readers to hear, after three such monthlies have been printed, how a few OGJ editors have adjusted their work and accommodated new demands.

OGJ veterans

Three of the four editors in my group, including myself, contribute the longer, often more technical articles that now distinguish the monthly printed OGJ. Each of us selects, edits, and proofreads articles in three industry segments: Guntis Moritis oversees drilling and production; Chris Smith, transportation (mostly pipelines but some LNG); and I, processing, often including LNG.

Since 1984, I have been meeting weekly deadlines for filling from 2 or 3 pages up to as many as 20 or more, depending on an issue's special report topic. Although for fewer years, Guntis and Chris have both faced the same requirements.

Rarely easy, the job was at least predictable: Every Monday, each of us filled a quota of pages in an issue that published 4 weeks hence. In later years, OGJ dropped Monday publication on the fifth Mondays in a year as well as on the final Monday of December. But OGJ editors who worked in what we still call the "back of the book"—Guntis, Chris, and I—barely felt the relief, if at all.

The new configuration multiplies work formerly spread over 4-5 days each week by the number of articles being prepared, and the monthly printing schedule compresses the month into 10-14 days as we evaluate submitted articles, write others ourselves, and try to compile the most useful and varied editorial package for readers in each of our segments.

In July this year, working simultaneously under both the old and the new deadline schedules forced a few editors' hairlines to recede a bit more and scored a few more wrinkles on their faces.

But we made it happen; we seamlessly evolved to a larger monthly print product from a thinner weekly product without missing the sacred (to us and OGJ readers) Monday publication date. And for 2 months now, that consistency has been maintained.

So what?

Making the transition so that readers barely noticed was part of a broader commitment to them to be timely with nearly timeless material that is as accurate and objective as we can make it.

So OGJ will continue to come out every Monday and will continue to use new technologies and formats to serve its readers…for another 108 years, at least.

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