A lot of my job has to do with the Website you’re on now while you’re reading my blog. CCJDigital.com has come a long way in the years since its origins in the mid-1990s. Back then, the site was pretty much “parked” – it didn’t really change much from day to day; the online copy told surfers about the magazine, and it listed a few contact phone numbers for sales, editorial and such.
Fast-forward to 2012, and what a difference. If someone back in 1996 had been able to look ahead 16 years and see what our Website – heck, any Website for that matter – would look like in the future, they probably wouldn’t recognize most of the features and verbage. It’s a testament to how quickly we’ve progressed as a world of online journalism and commerce; there’s little you can think of these days that doesn’t get done over the Internet, or gets reported there first – a lot of the time before television.
I know the world of CCJ has evolved tremendously since I joined the magazine’s staff in 2004. A mere eight years ago, we posted a few breaking news stories online here and there when we thought our readers needed to know about a huge development as soon as possible, but our focus was pretty much on the print product. Two years later, we kicked off our CCJ Daily Report, a daily e-mail newsletter with the day’s big trucking news and other announcements from fleets and related companies. Putting together the daily e-newsletter naturally led to a boom in news items for our Website, and today the two are a premier source for trucking information.
We’re now branching out into social media, which just goes to show you that things keeps evolving and changing. It’s hard to imagine what the Internet or online world will look like in another 16 years – or if yet another format will evolve that leaves the World Wide Web in the dust. Now that’s freaky to imagine – but somehow, someway, CCJ will be there in some shape, form or fashion. The magazine has weathered a lot of change for more than 100 years, so it’s a good bet we’re here to stay.
