The start of an era
The article below is the editorial leader column from the last ever printed issue of Computer Weekly magazine.
If you like nostalgia, you may want to treasure the magazine you hold in your hands now, as this is the last time that Computer Weekly will be produced in its paper format.
On 22 September 1966 we started an era, as the world’s first weekly IT newspaper. Today, we start another, even more exciting era as the UK’s best, oldest and most widely respected IT publication goes 100% digital.
Every week for 45 years Computer Weekly has written about how technology is changing the way companies and governments work. In recent years, as we have covered how the internet is revolutionising so many aspects of all our lives, we have also been experiencing ourselves the changes that are transforming the publishing industry faster than almost any other sector.
Our readers’ habits have changed, with IT professionals leading the move to finding information and following the news online. Our advertisers’ preferences have changed even more, with fewer and fewer IT suppliers looking to printed magazines as an outlet for their marketing spend – as every reader will have witnessed in the shrinking pagination of this and other magazines. We may have been the first IT paper to be printed, but we will not be the last to go out of print.
Meanwhile, we have not been sitting on our paper-based laurels. For years we have been growing our online and digital content to meet those changing audience and advertiser needs, and today Computerweekly.com is one of the most popular IT websites in the UK. We have branched out into new forms of content – video, photos, podcasts, blogs, web seminars, online communities and face-to-face events, to name but a few. And those of you who currently receive the printed magazine will instead receive a digital version by email every week.
But one thing that has not and will not change is our commitment to providing the latest news, analysis, opinion and in-depth coverage of the UK IT scene, and to act as a champion for IT professionals, helping you to do your job better, with the information you need, supporting readers throughout their career in the most exciting industry in the world.
We also mark the move to being fully digital with a further change for the Computer Weekly team. We are leaving Reed Business Information, our home since launch in 1966, to become part of Techtarget, one of the biggest specialist IT publishing companies in the world. It’s an exciting time for all of us as we move to an organisation that really understands the needs of our demanding audience, and will provide the investment and growth to keep Computer Weekly at the forefront of IT publishing in the UK for the next 45 years and beyond.
Some of the UK’s best journalists have written for Computer Weekly across the past five decades – some of whom you may recognise from the television and national newspapers. We have won awards for our journalism and supported the careers of many of today’s top IT leaders as they have risen through the profession. By going digital, we can continue to deliver those same standards, and the same high quality, in the modern formats that you choose to use.
Technology has become part of everyday life like never before, and it’s our privilege to be writing about IT at such a critical point in the information revolution. As a digital, multimedia publication, we will not just be writing about those changes, but living them. Thank you and goodbye to paper and ink, you were great while you lasted. Welcome instead, to our new era.