This week the Austin Business Journal launched a new and re-imaged look to their weekly publication and website.
Congratulations to my friends: publisher, Heather Ladage and editor, Colin Pope (and the whole ABJ Team) on a great new layout and updated style of informing their readers.
I have known both Heather and Colin for nearly 15 years (I met Colin in 1999, and Heather in 2001). They are both local success stories whose personal accomplishments are cool all by themselves. Each began at the ABJ in entry level jobs and have grown their careers inside the American City Business Journals corporation and risen to the two top Austin jobs, running the city's premier source for local business news and information.
With this launch the paper has done more than changed its logo. This has been a long process lasting more than a year. Many of the ACBJ papers around the country are also retooling their business models to better serve their communities. They have hired media consultants and held several local and national focus groups to discover the best ways to move beyond the weekly print edition format of reporting business news. This is a full redesign of how news is packaged and reported.
Over the past few years there have been major shifts in how people seek, find, consume, internalize and share information. While many newspapers have failed to keep up with these changes (daily papers around the country continue to struggle and fail), The Austin Business Journal has been embracing changes all along the way (I remember participating in an informal meeting with Colin over eight years ago to discuss social media'a impact on the News).
The paper is about more than printing corporate press releases, but instead it is a hub for what is happening and a mechanism to discover the people and trends that will impact our community. With the new changes they have vowed to be a continued source of business intelligence. According to Heather; "News and connections strengthen our economy. News has also become a conversation that does not stop with a story in the weekly print edition". The team at the ABJ is working to be a catalyst for these conversations.
I know how hard they have both worked (along with their co-workers) to transform the vision for the new Austin Business Journal into a reality. It is fun to write about them in this week's "Cool Things My Friends Do" blog post (week #94 in the series)... as they are usually writing about others!!!
Have A Great Day
thom singer
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