I’ve got to admit something. These first couple months here have been crazy. Seriously, for someone who prides himself on an ability to hit the ground running, there were times when I felt I’d landed on my head instead of my feet, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get them under me much less moving with any sort of forward momentum.
The good news is that after these first couple issues of the magazine, I’m finally upright, pointed in the right direction, picking up a little speed, and looking down the road we’ll be traveling together—not just a few issues ahead, but on into next year.
See, while it still is only the first quarter of 2011 to most of the world, in the fast-forward time-warp that is the magazine publishing industry, it literally won’t be very long before I have to sit down and start mapping out 2012’s editorial calendar and populating it with topics.
I’ve been mulling some ideas I think you’ll appreciate. I’d like to involve our editorial board members and invited guests into regular hot-topic roundtable discussions. I’d like to get the magazine out from behind the desk and off the phone and into actually working environments, where the products in these pages are actually being used and why. I’d like to get more podcasts online, and have a more active presence at trade shows. I’d like to put social media components such as Twitter, Facebook, and blogging to more effective and engaging use.
In short, I’d like to see the magazine take a more hands-on and first-person approach with its editorial content that involves direct contact and conversations with players both major and minor across the industry.
But the most major players I’d most like to hear from in the interim are the Clinical Lab Products’ readers who can help me get a sense of what they would like to read about each month. Yeah, that’s right. I’m talking to you! And I’m asking what can I do to help make your anticipation for each new issue increase.
Web Box: To stay on top of developments in the clinical lab space, bookmark www.clpmag.com.
So please consider this your official invitation to think about and offer up what it is you like about CLP, what it is you could do without, and what it is you want to find more of not only within each issue’s pages but also across its Web site, www.clpmag.com.
And on a final note looking in the opposite direction, a request—even though it might be a long shot. With CLP now in its 41st year of publication and no deep archives available, if by chance you happen to have any 10-year-old or older issues of the magazine hanging around, please let me know. For as much as I’m looking forward, it would be a blast to nostalgically share looks backward, too.
Will Campbell
Editor, CLP
(213) 254-5449
