by Peggy Boyer Long

Five years ago we started dreaming about producing an electronic edition of this magazine.

It seemed a long way from possible at the time. Like most everyone in the communications business, we were just beginning to navigate the Internet, and just beginning to construct a basic Web site. We had a lot to learn, a lot to accomplish. And there was no chance for additional dollars or staff to make it happen.

How far we’ve come.

Despite the hurdles, this fall we launched Illinois Issues Online. I encourage you to visit it. Log on at http://illinoisissues.uis.edu.

Our new site is still a work in progress, no doubt about it. But even this early effort offers more than mere highlights from the most recent issue of the magazine, something we’ve provided over the past several years. Illinois Issues Online is designed to complement and enhance our monthly printed edition, not simply replicate it. We still have a long way to go, it’s true. Yet, through the immediacy of this evolving electronic technology, we can now offer our regular readers, and a universe of potential readers, the latest information on important issues and people, the kind of news that naturally occurs between editions.

The site also offers an archive of special projects. And eventually it will make available all past issues of the magazine, searchable by key word. This is being made possible through the services of Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, which chose Illinois Issues as a test case in its grant-funded Illinois Periodicals Online project.

Our site now provides links to major resources for government information. It tells our electronic readers how they can subscribe to or advertise in the printed magazine. And it eases interactions with our staff.

None of this could have happened without the hard work of three people in particular. Our talented art director Diana Nelson taught herself from scratch, in the narrow margins of available free time, how to construct a Web site. We think the new look was worth the effort — and the down time on our old Web site.

Meanwhile, our special projects editor Maureen McKinney devoted considerable time to researching public affairs resource links. Beyond carrying out her responsibilities to the printed magazine, she updates the news and people sections on the Web site.

But the brains, and sometimes the brawn, behind these advances was our publisher Ed Wojcicki. Ed left at the end of December to tackle other challenges on this campus, but his legacy to the magazine was his forward thinking in communications, his energetic focus on finding new ways to serve readers. An electronic edition of the magazine was his vision first.

“We’re published by a university,” he would say. “And that means we have a special obligation to experiment. We should be trying things because that’s what universities do.” Besides, he would add, our readers expect to be able to turn to us on the Web. A recent survey shows that nearly a quarter of our readers get information on the Internet every day. More are likely to do so in the future. And more readers who haven’t yet discovered our printed edition may find us first on the Web.

This is our shared vision now. There’s still untapped potential in this powerful technology. True to our public affairs mission, we could become more than a one-stop source for information about government and politics; we could become an interactive education tool on state policy questions.

Illinois Issues Online is up and running.
And we’re still dreaming.

Illinois Issues, January 2002

For information about how to subcribe to Illinois Issues go to:
http://illinoisissues.uis.edu/subscribe/subscribe.html

Go to Illinois Issues blog at http://illinoisissuesblog.blogspot.com/

Write a letter to the editor
I would like to comment on this article
(Please state month and author of article.)
Ask a staff member
Home