BHM enters the blogging age
Friday, June 8th, 2007
Launching this blog has to be one of the most frustratingly difficult things I have done in my life. It is a perfect example of the chasm that now exists in American society between an older generation like me who is not comfortable on the internet and a younger generation, like most of you who are now reading this blog, who are comfortable with it.
This blog is intended to help bring BHM into the 21st century. At age 63, I may not feel at home on this instantaneous-feedback medium, but I can see it represents the future of magazines, while a paper magazine such as I now publish will probably join other print relics of history before my lifetime ends. It’s all happening so damn fast!
Near as I can tell, about one-third of Backwoods Home Magazine’s print issue subscribers do not do the internet, and they likely never will. I feel for them. I empathize with them. I publish my magazine for them, and I go only grudgingly into this new medium because two-thirds of BHM’s print issue readership is as comfortable here as they are with the print issue. I have no choice unless I want to be left behind.
I am a hybrid, with one foot in the old print world and the other stepping lightly into the internet. Next month the internet will be even more revolutionary than it is today. And next year it will be unimaginably newer. I doubt society has ever been transformed so quickly, and so frequently.
But I have seen the future for a long time. That’s why I’ve worked with BHM’s webmaster, Oliver Del Signore, this past decade developing our large and well organized website, www.backwoodshome.com. And now I’ll hop aboard in a more personal way and try and give you a publisher’s personal view of what it’s like to found and direct a print issue magazine for 18 years, then transition to the internet over maybe another 18. I have a lot of insight, I think, but obviously I have a lot to learn with this new technology.
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