As ICG President Kevin Roche said in his January 2023 “From the President’s Desk,” The International Costumer is now publishing individual articles as blog posts on the “International Costumer” page of the ICG website.This change came about out of necessity because we are still working without an editor.
This was one of the options that the ICG Publications Committee presented in a report to the ICG Board of Directors in November 2022, based on input from a member survey that the we conducted earlier in the year. It is the only option that enables the ICG to continue providing news, information and content to its members.
There are some benefits to publishing content this way. First, it allows content to become available to members sooner because it is published immediately, rather than waiting for the next issue of the newsletter to come out. Timeliness was one of the things that members said they valued in the survey. This is known as “continuous publication” and it is the new direction in the publishing industry.
Second, the blog format allows content to be read on more devices because its layout adapts to the screen size. The newsletter is based on a fixed letter-size page format that does not adapt to mobile devices. This is something that many members who use mobile devices asked for in the survey.
Third, it does not require a skilled newsletter editor to solicit, receive, and format content. In many cases authors can edit their own articles using a familiar visual editor. The web team can help out if an author needs it. This streamlines the publishing processand makes it more accessible everyone.
If an editor steps forward in the future, we may resume publishing issues of the International Costumer newsletter, but we will also continue making content available in the new blog format because of the benefits I just outlined. We are also investigating ways to automate aggregating articles published in a particular timeframe into issues and making them available for download.
The ICG Publications Committee would like to thank ICG President Kevin Roche for his invaluable guidance, and help during this process. We would also like to thank ICG members for your continued support.
Philip Gust
Chair, ICG Publications Committee
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