This is my last column as the editor of WATT PoultryUSA. After 35 years of writing and editing for my publisher, I am leaving WATT Global Media to pursue new opportunities beginning October 1.
The years have brought dramatic changes to which the poultry industry, and my publisher, have so admirably responded. It has been hugely gratifying to have witnessed and been a part of this success story.
Technology has yielded vast improvement in speed and productivity in the media business, just as it has for poultry companies. Today, I can share my computer screen instantly from my home with company clients or editors located around the world. At the touch of computer key, I can collaborate on content in real time with industry experts anywhere. And it takes just milliseconds to send a newly written article to the publisher in Illinois.
Technology’s powerful role in media
The power of these changes can be best appreciated in perspective. Recently, I was having lunch at a restaurant in Georgia, where I spied on the wall the framed covers of a couple of 1932 issues of Poultry Tribune, a WATT magazine that I edited in the 1980s. The technology used to produce those magazine issues had changed only marginally by 1981.
At the time that I joined the company, the editors and secretaries used electric typewriters to key-stroke text onto paper manuscripts. Those were sent by snail-mail for manual typesetting and on to printing presses, and the printed magazine copies trucked to a post office for delivery by second-class mail.
Content must provide solutions
Today, the audience is often choosing digital delivery, and content often passes from an editor’s computer to the reader’s screen in mere minutes.
Technology has changed dramatically, but the fundamentals for success remain the same. It is about connecting with people and providing valuable solutions to problems. The technology is only the means to those ends. Technology has empowered the poultry media to be responsive and interactive, but future success, like always, depends on the value of content.
It is an exciting time to be involved in the business of media and communications, and I am looking forward to tackling these new challenges.
