The 'New E&P': A Progress Report, After 5 Months

By: Greg Mitchell After five months, is it too soon to declare the "new" E&P, as a monthly magazine with a re-designed Web site, a clear success? Maybe, but we have to admit, we are extremely pleased with the results so far.

Since you are reading this on a computer screen, let's start with the Web. Since March, our online traffic has more than tripled, both in page views (well over 2 million in May) and in unique visitors (nearly half a million last month). Frankly, this is beyond our wildest hopes for this year. Online advertising, not coincidentally, far exceeds projections.

When we switched our print frequency to monthly, after more than a century as a weekly, we urged longtime readers to look to the Web for breaking news, now absent in the magazine. Apparently you are doing this (possibly several times a day) and clearly we are also welcoming many newcomers. We hope you like what you've seen: from hard news to original columns to Newspeople.

In print, meanwhile, vital signs are also very good.

Despite shifting from 46 issues a year to 12, circulation is strong, with renewals coming in at a very healthy rate. Advertising, both display and classified, is also "beating budget." Many clients are opting for an "integrated package" of ads in print and on the Web. Classified customers are taking advantage of a similar offer with very positive results so far.

As you may have seen somewhere, we won an unprecedented three Jesse H. Neal Awards, the top prize in business journalism, earlier this spring. While improving E&P content is imperative, we feel we're getting the hang of monthly publication pretty well, and the magazine looks better than ever, you might agree.

More and more, E&P is not just covering the news but making news, as you may have noticed. Our e-mail boxes are overflowing these days, and not just from spam.

So let's hear from you (again) now. What do you think of all this? If you have any comments or complaints, drop us a line at letters@editorandpublisher.com, and we will consider every critique. It's been an exciting, rewarding and, in some ways, amazing, five months, and we vow to keep trying to get better and faster in the years ahead.