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Editorial
Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 33 Number 12
August 2005
Our new web site: What it is, and isn’t
The process of gathering the news hasn’t really changed very much over the three decades that we have been publishing Commercial Fisheries News.
Each and every month we still rely on a network of skilled and experienced editors, writers, photographers, and other contributors to be on the scene wherever and whenever the news is happening.
They bring it back, we package it up, and a few days later another jam-packed issue of Commercial Fisheries News arrives in your mailbox.
Other publications may do it differently, but in thirty-plus years of producing this newspaper, we have never found a suitable substitute for accurate, informed, first-person reporting – which may explain CFN’s long reign as the industry’s recognized newspaper of record.
But the business of delivering the news has changed dramatically, particularly over the past five years, and we as publishers have an obligation to keep pace with new technology and evolving reader trends.
So it is that we have stepped from the sidelines to fully commit our talents and resources to <www.fish-news.com/cfn>, the digital version of CFN, now readily available on the web.
If you have already visited our new site, you know that this marks a bold step in a whole new direction for us. For the first time ever, significant portions of the monthly content of CFN, the print newspaper, are now available online.
To veteran web surfers this may seem like a no-brainer and some of you reading this may be saying, “Gee, it’s about time.”
But for us, the design, development, and functionality of this new web site has been a painstaking process and, frankly, one that is still evolving as we learn more about web publishing.
Chief among our concerns has been, and will continue to be, preserving and protecting the loyal and unique bond that exists between CFN and its readers and advertisers.
CFN was built on the foundation that the news, perspective, and analysis we provide is worth paying for and, in fact, would not be possible without the support provided by a large base of paid readers.
In addition to the significant income provided by subscriptions and single-copy sales, those paid readers are important to our advertisers. By showing their support for CFN with their checkbooks, our readers help assure advertisers of the effectiveness and good value of marketing in the pages of this newspaper.
But even casual web browsers know that most news on the web is free, whether from The New York Times or your local hometown weekly. We are not currently prepared to buck this trend.
So the challege for us is in selecting just how much and what kind of content to post on the web to make our site useful to both new and existing readers without undermining our print publication and its readers and advertisers.
Tricky stuff, this web publishing.
Furthermore, we have tried to put ourselves in your shoes, thinking about how and why and when you might be using our site.
Knowing that time is money in the fishing business we have tried to keep the site simple, straightforward, and fast to use and access.
Many of you in our readership area may not have high-speed Internet service; it’s only recently been available to us. With this in mind, we’ve kept photos and graphics on the site somewhat minimal to better accommodate visitors using slower dial-up connections.
Finally, here is some of what you will find on our site, along with a few things that you won’t.
You will find:
Complete text (and sometimes supporting photos) from several major news stories in each issue;
The lead editorial (op-ed) from each issue;
Headlines and the first few paragraphs of most major stories as a “teaser” to the current print issue of CFN;
Classified advertising pages with a one-issue lag (June classifieds get posted with the July issue content to further protect our paid subscribers);
Easy-to-use forms to subscribe (new or renewal) and/or place a classified ad online. You can also make a credit card payment online via our secure server;
Information about advertising in CFN; and
A quick and easy e-mail link to contact our editors.
You will not find:
Our usual monthly departments (such as ATCs, Bearin’s; Enforcement Report; New Boats; Market Reports; etc.) ;
Many of the photos that appear in each issue;
Display ads from each issue; and
Current classified ads.
This is, as we said, a work in progress.
Our goal is to make this site useful, informative, and easy-to-use for both our existing audience as well as new readers who may “discover” CFN via the web.
We are also hopeful this may be one vehicle for reaching younger people coming into the fishing business, an audience that has so far proved elusive.
Most importantly, we are open to suggestion. We want to hear from you; we need your feedback.
Tell us what you like, or don’t like, about the site. Tell us what you’d like to see, changes we should make. Tell us how you use this site (and CFN) and how we can make it better.
Log on. It’s <www.fish-news.com/cfn>.
Enjoy. /cfn/
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