Change is good, right?
I hope you agree because what you are holding in your hands is a change in the way we do things here at TWICE.
The challenge of surviving as a business media company in 2017 is finding a balance between producing a compelling print product and maintaining a vital up-to-the-second website. For a brand like TWICE, the balance is especially tricky because our traditional industry readers have relied on our coverage of breaking news for more than 30 years. But in recent years we have found our audience also seeks context and analysis of what those breaking news stories mean.
We have tried our best to provide both sides of every story, online and in print, but we found the average reader doesn’t necessarily distinguish between the formats he or she gets the information, as long it’s correct.
So we decided to reconsider our approach to the coverage of this industry and how we could make the information we choose to cover more interesting, more interactive and more nuanced.
This issue of TWICE represents a new vision of our print edition. Gone are the strict product category sections. Back when TWICE was launched, retail buyers were mostly focused on one specific category. The thinking was “why would an audio buyer care about mobile electronics or video?” So the magazine was divided into sections to make it easier to navigate.
The state of retailing in the 21st century demands new standards. The walls between product categories have fallen. The connected world transcends boundaries as the Internet of Things has connected everything. It’s a new paradigm.
Further, our readers have evolved. Social media is where many people get their news now. The idea of sitting down and paging through a magazine to get news is antiquated at best, a quaint reminder of past times.
So going forward, TWICE is embarking on a quest to have the best damned breaking-news website in the technology sector. We will follow our blueprint of only sharing the information you need to further the goals of your business, whether you are a manufacturer, a retailer, a distributor or an engineer, salesperson or CEO. We will not waste your time with ubiquitous “unboxing” videos and superfluous click-bait links.
In print, we have changed our focus entirely. Our goal is to take all that breaking news and, relying on the experience of our staff over decades of covering the technology sector, put it all into context, using analysis, the input of industry experts, statistics and good old-fashioned intuition, to create a well of information that you can draw upon to make sure your business is keeping up with he breakneck pace of the industry.
We have also reached out to a diverse lineup of industry professionals to counsel us. The TWICE Editorial Advisory Panel will review our editorial calendar, comment on our coverage and suggest topics they believe deserve more attention, or that may be getting too much.
I hope you appreciate the direction we are going in. For 32 years we have strived to be the voice of the technology industry. I believe our efforts to engage our professional audience has never been more focused. And I sincerely hope you will offer up your voice when you feel it is needed.
