Editorial: Managing our own change

This issue introduces a new look for Federal Computer Week.

The magazine has gone through many redesigns. Longtime readers will remember that FCW started more than 20 years ago as a tabloid newspaper. Then it evolved into something like a tabloid magazine. And in 2000, FCW became a magazine. Our most recent design dates to January 2004, and a lot has changed in four years.

Like so many things, redesigning a magazine represents both a challenge and an opportunity. Readers tend to get comfortable with a publication and like knowing where to find the information they want. Let’s face it — we can all be reluctant to change.

But one thing remains the same: our commitment to providing information that helps you do your job better. The redesign gives us an opportunity to present that information more clearly, which is important because there’s no shortage of content out there. We hope that we can help you sort through what you need to know — and what you don’t.

With that in mind, we have made several significant changes.

• The Week: There is an implicit understanding that you get most of your news online. You aren’t waiting for your print publication of Federal Computer Week — or any other magazine, for that matter — to find out what has happened. However, there might be news that you haven’t read. So we are now using the front pages of the magazine — called “The Week” — to pull together the stories that you need to know. We will highlight a few and offer brief reports on others, and we will pull them all together online at www.fcw.com/theweek. On that page, you will find links to the stories so you can read more about the ones that are important to you.

• FCW Forum: Part of what publications do is build community, and we believe presenting a variety of voices is an important way to do that. Therefore, our comment section — renamed FCW Forum — will continue to seek diverse opinions on various subjects.

• Answers to your questions: Readers often tell us they want stories that address specific questions and issues. Therefore, we will tag stories so you can easily see what they are about and include a box near the beginning that will tell you what questions the story will answer for you.

• Pointers: With so much information out there, there is no way we can cover everything. So the back page of FCW, which we are calling Pointers, will offer interesting items that might be relevant to our community. We’ll post the links online at www.fcw.com/theweek. Redesigns are evolutions. Although we believe we have a good starting point, we’d appreciate your thoughts about what we can do better.