Letters from Majuro
Where We Are, Where We're Going
If you’ve been a long-time reader of Pacific Magazine – and we’ve been publishing since 1976 – you will know that we’ve made significant changes in the publication this year. First, we turned the magazine into a monthly publication. It had been a bi-monthly for many years, in large part because of the cost of producing a monthly magazine and the level of advertising support. Second, we also significantly improved the quality of the paper we print on, and the photography, graphics and design that make the magazine reading experience more enjoyable.
But apart from the changes you can see and hold in your hands every month, we’ve been busy in areas that may not be evident to a reader. We’ve developed a Web site for the magazine (www.pacificislands.cc) that combines the content of the magazine with daily news updates about the Pacific Islands.
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We’ve also made a major push this year to broaden our advertising base, developing contacts and contracts with a wide variety of companies and organizations that find value in having a regular conversation with you, our readers. And speaking of readers, one of the first things we did after our parent company, PacificBasin Communications in Honolulu, purchased the magazine last year from its founder was spend considerable time and resources to strengthen our distribution system.
That is an on-going process, and quite frankly we discovered in recent months that the company that was handling this magazine’s subscription program was doing a poor job. We recently brought all of the subscription fulfillment efforts back in-house at PacificBasin Communications, and we apologize to those of you who have had trouble getting your subscription questions answered. In some cases, you had a hard time getting a subscription started! We are pushing hard to end these problems shortly.
While we’ve been working hard to make changes that we think improve Pacific Magazine, we’ve also made changes that have caused some readers to complain. Some miss the magazine’s previous format, which was heavy on brief news items and light on analytical articles that tried to put regional issues in perspective. Others complain that current issues are generally smaller than they used to be in the “good old days.”
They are tighter because as publishers, we need to make sure this magazine can continue to pay its staff, its printing bill, its mailing costs and the like. The magazines also are “smaller” because we use paper that while it is able to show off color and design better is also much lighter than the stock we used to use.
These explanations probably won’t satisfy all of those who have expressed concerns, but we hope they make clear what we’ve been working on for many months: to strengthen Pacific Magazine’s role as a regional leader, the only publication that covers all parts of the region and reaches all corners of the Pacific Islands.
You’ll see one sign of that push in this issue, and in the next three issues: our in-depth coverage of the men who lead the governments of the North Pacific. This is the first time any publication has covered the regional leaders in such depth. Next month, we’ll run our package of President Kessai Note of the Marshall Islands. In December, we’ll report on President Falcam of the Federated States of Micronesia. And in January, we’ll run our piece on President Remengesau of Palau.
Just remember, you read it here first.
