End of an Era and Start of a New One

I struggled with this moment for a while.

When Greg Henderson started the Southern Oregon Business Journal back in January 2016, it was 12 pages, printed and mailed.

Greg and I became partners until he retired in May 2020. I upgraded the website and made the SOBJ more than just a print publication.

COVID shut down printing so we moved entirely online and now only do special editions in print.

Readership has grown 20x since moving entirely online.

The print publication hovered around 40 or 44 pages over the years since I got involved and the number of stories we ran each month stayed somewhat consistent.

But this issue has been the most challenging to get out because so many stories are about AI and AI is changing daily. The stories I had at the beginning of the month were already out of date.

The number of stories in this months edition also greatly surpasses what I could put in the print edition.

And finally I had a potential advertiser tell me they do not want to do “print” ads even though I explained it’s just a flip-book PDF. They couldn’t get past that and decided to support online publications only. I kid you not.

So I think the end of the monthly “print” edition is finally here.

I will post stories as they are submitted or written and not hold on to them. Look how many we have this month already. Over 20 and counting. I’ll still email a recap to get subscribers attention and I’ll post on social to get more traffic.

I’ll still have a cover story as March should be on all the Solar Projects in Southern Oregon.

I asked my sponsors and advertisers and they welcome it.

There is a line from the original Ghostbusters where Dr. Egon Spengler says “Print is dead.” That movie came out in 1984. It took me 40 years, I’m a little slow.

I’ll be finding ways to showcase full page advertisers to you and the design of the journal online will change overtime.

Let me know what you think. It’s a pretty big change and change is hard on folks.

Speaking of change where are the photos?

Another change you see today is no images on the homepage next to each story. This is intentional for this issue. I got a press release from a local company a while back and ran it. It had a photo as part of the release. This month, I received a bill from the Associated Press (the AI police that scans for images) for using the image unlicensed and a demand to take it down. I paid the bill and took down the photo. Lesson learned but it bothers me. The bill was for more than what I make a month on the journal. So my little protest this month, no photos… I’m such a rebel.

Jim Teece, Publisher of the SOBJ. SouthernOregonBusinessJournal.com