The brave new world of publishing

On my first day of my first year of journalism school, my classmates and I were ushered into the newsroom. It was filled with electric typewriters. That year, every story we wrote was banged out on those loud, clacking machines. They were edited in red pen, re-typed, and then hand delivered to the local printing press to be typeset.

Likewise, we developed all our photographs on black and white film which we hand developed and then printed. After cropping them with grease pencils, these too were hand delivered to the printing press where they were rasterized into half-tones.

On the first day of my second year of journalism school, our newsroom had changed. Typewriters were replaced with IBM workstations and we were introduced to a new process: desktop publishing! And the world of publishing was never the same.

I consider myself lucky to have experienced so many changes in journalism and publishing. I believe that I’ve owned over a dozen continually evolving computers and I’ve lost track of how many digital cameras. Publishing software seems to flow seamlessly from one program to the next. And it’s not just the technology that changes, but the culture of how we share and process information.

I am always surprised by just how surprised I am by new developments. You’d think I’d get used to change by now. But one thing never changes, the excitement that accompanies these changes.

When I took over the editorship of Education Forum, of course I wanted to introduce some change. But I never dreamed at how enormous an undertaking it would be to expand the delivery method of the magazine by introducing an online version of the publication. After almost six months of feverish and frantic work by our staff, I am pleased to announce that Education-Forum.ca is now live!

One of the most significant changes in publishing has been where eyes fall, less often on paper, more often on screens. And as much as I hope you visit the home page of Education-Forum.ca, I assume that you’ll be more likely to read individual articles on a computer screen, tablet or phone. And you’ll probably read that article because someone forwarded it to you through email or more likely through social media. This is the publishing world today! And I hope you engage the process by sharing the articles that you like with others as well. Consider subscribing to our site, liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter. All three methods will keep you up to date with Education Forum.

Now we haven’t abandoned paper altogether. We are still distributing issues to workplaces, albeit with fewer copies.

And as always, in all our formats, we will still appreciate your readership and continue to be a progressive voice on public education.