For those of you who have been in this industry for, well, let’s just call it a while, I’m sure you’ll understand my point. For those of you who are much newer to the industry and perhaps never knew a time when phones couldn’t take pictures, I know you’ll understand, too.
My point is this: We — the people of my generation — get it.
Oh, my kids give me grief when they see me giving my smartphone angry looks. And there have been more than a few frustrated hard swipes and finger jabs at my iPad. But seriously, for some time now, Feed & Grain’s embraced and explored the digital opportunities for communicating with this industry.
I bring this up because, in the media world, there’s been some snobbery among those who call themselves digital natives and who may have suggested some of us were now and forever more “print-centric” publishers. A semi-polite, techno-speak way of saying, “Are you sure you didn’t grow up with hieroglyphics?”
No. We had chisels and stone tablets but we were past the hieroglyphics stage. Damn kids.
The thing is, regardless of the format, we always focused on meeting your information needs. Our editors knew that if we took care of our readers, then advertisers were more likely to follow. I have always been fortunate to have editors who could lead the way.
From my point of view, even way back in the day of (gasp!) no email and no www prefix, if we didn’t give you information that had value, it was too easy to lose you as a reader. We don’t like losing readers!
Those two aspects — bringing audience and content together — have never changed. We need to create content that you will access or agree to receive, and because it’s content you want, you are gracious enough to give us your address and email address.
The great thing about today’s world is that we have more ways to make content available to you. In fact, we’re launching a live event next August to take our ability to deliver content onto a whole new platform.
We’ve distilled our focus, our commitment, down to three words: Reach. Connect. Engage.
You’ll be seeing those words over the next several months as we continue working to keep you as customers! As always, thanks for reading. And please, if you have comments or input, we’re always willing to listen.
