While I have never run a railroad, I am guessing that publishing a magazine is like running a railroad. You have an assortment of diverse customer needs, you have a limited budget, and you need to offer the best possible service to everyone.
But the parallel goes beyond that. In the railroad business you can make up your train out of an assortment of different cars, and based on the number of cars and the terrain you must travel through, you can pick the number of engines to pull it. As publisher of LJ, I get to pick the article mix, pick the number of pages, and pick who receives the magazine. If I do my job right, LJ gets more customers, which gets it more revenue--revenue from advertisers as well as readers--and everyone benefits.
All that said, I want to tell you what has changed at LJ, why it has changed and what you will see in the future. And, for our old customers, I want to assure you that you will continue to get the service you expect.
We take the tag line on the cover (``The Monthly Magazine of the Linux Community'') seriously. I fought for this before Issue 1 was published, and I continue to fight to make sure we stay on track. Today, however, that community is changing and we need to respond to those changes. While there is still a large Linux development community, there are other easily-identifiable ``communities'' needing a reliable source of Linux information. Here are a few:
Let's take one example, web developers, and see why it is important that we give them the information they need. Linux is an ideal platform for developing web content and Linux systems make ideal web servers. But web developers have choices. When someone says, ``Why should I use Linux instead of NT for my web server?'' we need to have a good answer. Being able to point at books like CGI Programming in C & Perl, by Thomas Boutell, a Linux user himself, helps. Being able to show the person that a monthly magazine called Linux Journal will answer ongoing questions, offer sources for essential hardware and software, and generally offer needed support is another important part of the answer.
John Fisk, the creator of the Gazette, has run out of time to produce it and we struck a deal whereby LG can continue as a vendor-independent source of information. Its new home will be http://www.ssc.com/lg/, and its new editor will be Marjorie Richardson. She can be reached at gazette@ssc.com.
In addition, a new editor and a new home, there will be other changes to the Gazette. While we will continue to offer an on-line version, we intend to include part of the Gazette in the pages of Linux Journal. We will offer the information we consider of the greatest interest, and pointers to additional on-line information.