From the Editor: New Year, New Focus
With the arrival of 2015, IPG enters its 65th year of publication. To catch you up, we started in January of 1951, changed names a few times over the years, and here we are, ready to face a new year.
In this digital day and age, 65 years is quite an accomplishment. As you may know, printed magazines are dropping like flies. In the printing business, we’ve lost most of the magazines that once graced printers’ desks: Graphic Arts Monthly, Printing News, Canadian Printer, Electronic Publishing, High-Volume Printing, even our arch enemy In-plant Printer, they’ve all bitten the dust. But IPG is still here, fighting the good fight, standing up for the reputations of in-plants everywhere.
Also standing strong is Printing Impressions, our sister publication here at North American Publishing Co. How is it that these two print magazines are still here while so many of our competitors have fallen?
While it’s true that IPG’s enthusiastic readership plays some part in our perseverance, a large share of credit goes to our forward-thinking parent company and the steps it took to adapt to the digital age. IPG and PI were among the first of the graphic arts magazines to have websites, launch e-newsletters and publish digital editions. We’ve moved beyond the printed page to present webinars and live events. IPG was the very first industry magazine to produce online videos. (I had a small hand in that effort, I’ll admit. My IPMA 2006 conference video started it all.)
Our advancing skill sets and broadening scope of activities have led NAPCO to make a major change starting this month. We have updated our name to NAPCO Media, to better represent our evolving portfolio of services. We now specialize in the creation and cross-channel distribution of content across all platforms and mediums.
With a new video services group, a new events group and more, NAPCO Media is anticipating new opportunities. What does this mean for you? For one thing, our focus on producing events means more free conferences and idea-sharing meetings, such as the three breakfast and lunch events we hosted at Graph Expo. You’ll very soon hear about a free in-plant conference in Washington, DC, that IPG is organizing and running.
Our videos will continue to delight you—or at least show you what some of your fellow managers are doing along with some of the in-plant events they’re attending. We’re also relaunching our website in May with an improved user interface.
But what of our printed magazines? After all, we know how much printers love ink on paper. As long as we can support IPG through revenue from advertisers who want to show you their solutions, we’ll keep it coming. So I ask you to continue looking at things from that perspective and take a serious look at what they have to offer to help your in-plant improve.
Happy New Year from IPG. Hope to see you at an industry event in 2015.
Bob has served as editor of In-plant Impressions since October of 1994. Prior to that he served for three years as managing editor of Printing Impressions, a commercial printing publication. Mr. Neubauer is very active in the U.S. in-plant industry. He attends all the major in-plant conferences and has visited more than 180 in-plant operations around the world. He has given presentations to numerous in-plant groups in the U.S., Canada and Australia, including the Association of College and University Printers and the In-plant Printing and Mailing Association. He also coordinates the annual In-Print contest, co-sponsored by IPMA and In-plant Impressions.
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